My Dad Rocks: Forever and Always (D Dennison)

I noticed that Charley Barnes wrote about his dad yesterday and thought, you know what, he may not be here anymore, but my Dad Rocks too! I am the only child of Riley and Lynda Gilstrap and that makes me smile from the inside out. It's true that my daddy left this world way too soon and I didn't get to know him as I should, but something tells me, by the stories I've heard and the blood that runs through my veins, that he would have ROCKED!

I have been told that my dad would work long and hard days, but the instant he walked in the door, he would scoop me up and play with me. He would make me giggle out loud till I lost my breath. My dad would hold me high and hold me close. My mom used to tell me that he loved me more than anything in the world.

My dad was a hard worker, worked two jobs after his dad died to help his mom. He played the saxophone and took it everywhere he went. My grandma Volz told me he loved her chicken salad sandwiches and that he would gobble them up, even sometimes begged for them. My mom lived at the back of the cul-de-sac and he on the corner, my mom used to pretend to mail letters in the mailbox on the corner just to get a chance to see him. They were married on mom's 18th birthday, which just happened to be his 22nd birthday. I was born the following Septemberon the 16th. My dad then died 14 months later. Mom never remarried and made sure to surround me with stories of my dad, that's how I know, my dad rocks!