Thread by @pptsapper

One day when I was ten, I was just hanging out in the yard. Playing. Probably something war-related, as usual.

We lived about a mile away from the railroad. Could always hear the trains coming. But this one day, it sounded different. Deeper, somehow. Dad came up from the garden

"It's a steam engine" he says, his eyes all lit up. Dad was born in 1937 and never liked the transition away from coal. He'd tell me about watching trains hauling flatbeds full of Sherman tanks through Sidney, OH during WWII. He'd infected me with his love of steam locomotives

So we hop in dad's track and tool down the road, chasing the steam engine - for that's what it was, black and shiny - until it came to rest at a stop, steam billowing out

My eyes were probably the size of dinner plates. I was living every bit of this

But dad wasn't done

He walked up to the engineer and began chatting

Dad could chat the hind leg off a donkey

Before you know it, he was waving me over and suddenly I was climbing up in the cab, sitting in the engineer's seat, and pulling the whistle

Best. Damn. Day. Ever.

Dad's burial was this morning, just up the road from where this picture was taken, in the small hilltop cemetery near where I grew up

My sister and I were present via video chat. It was surprisingly more cathartic than I expected

Closure is coming, I think.