No Idea How Much We Miss You

“I guess by now I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence.”  ~ Alyson Noel, Evermore

Three years ago tomorrow, my world changed when we lost Mr. Franklin.  Each year since then, I've written about him on that day.  About how there are some questions for which no answers exist and about how he always looks over my shoulder. 

So when this year rolled around, I started thinking about some of my favorite Mr. Franklin moments.  You've read about a lot of the big ones.  The first lamb sale.  Chasing me with scissors.  The golf cart page at the last lamb sale.  The food poisoning ordeal. 

But there are some smaller moments that were just as good.  I thought that today I'd share three of those moments--one for each year that he's been gone. 

1.  My junior year, we had the FFA banquet at night.  My friend KP burned a cd to play while everyone was eating.  So immediately after the prayer, KP runs over and presses play on the cd player.  And over the loud speaker, you hear the unmistakeable crack of a beer can openining.  Out blasts, "Pop a top, again."  You've never seen a little man move as fast as Mr. Franklin did going to push "skip" on that cd player.  Poor KP never got to dj again.

2.  Mr. Franklin took some strange pride in driving the oldest, most beat up, crappiest school vehicle that you can imagine.  We'd leave the brand new, shiny suburban in the barn and leave town in a 1970's model station wagon.  So the day we rolled up to District Judging in the brand new Ford Excursion, several ag teachers came over to see what the heck was going on.  They asked how he got to drive something like this.  He answered, "This is what happens when you sleep with the superintendent, boys."  (Just to be clear, Mrs. Franklin was the superintendent.)

3.  It was the spring of my freshman year of college, and I was home for a weekend.  We were looking at lambs in the first pen under the lamb barn at Mr. Franklin's house.  I was sitting on a bucket while everyone looked at lambs and shot the breeze.  Mr. Franklin walked over and kicked the bucket, and knocked me off.  Then he helped me off the ground, hugged me with tears in his eyes and said, "You have no idea how much we miss you." 

Ditto.  That pretty much sums up the way I feel today.