David Gilkison 1948-2010

My Dad passed away last week after a long, hard battle with colon cancer. He was originally diagnosed in 2001, recovered, and had just a couple of years free of the disease before it came back with a vengeance. He couldn't shake it after its return and even ended up losing one of his kidneys because of it. This last bout was really bad and he had to take aggressive chemo treatments and radiation and nothing was making much of a difference, but he just kept taking more and more hoping that there would be a change. He really fought hard but it was time for his body to rest and for him to have some peace.

He was born in the South suburbs of Chicago and I really can't imagine him living anywhere else, despite the fact that he always said he wanted to retire in California, probably around San Francisco. His mother was the granddaughter of German immigrants and his father came from a long line of Indiana and Kentucky farmers. They divorced when he was very young. He graduated from high school and went into the Navy during Vietnam and managed to come back home. He married my Mom and worked as a truck driver. I always thought he was kindof an anomaly in that profession because he was a whiz with money (I was the only 1st grader with shares in a couple of stocks!) and loved art and art history. He would have been a great art history professor or stock trader I think, he was that interested in the subjects and that good. Not really the kind of jobs that you usually think truck drivers could do, but that was Dad. He was also passionate about his two favorite hobbies-photography and golf. The history buff in him turned his interest towards the works of Ansel Adams and hickory-shafted golf clubs rather than the more modern styles, though he did have interest in the changing faces of his hobbies too.

I'll definitely miss the way he encouraged me, sometimes more like pushing :) and he always seemed to care what was happening with me and what I was up to, just like a Dad should. It's still hard to think that the time has come to say goodbye, but I'm glad that he's finally got some rest and peace.

Here's probably my favorite picture of Dad with his own dad, my Grandpa