He taught me that relationships only work when everyone is getting out of the relationship what they need. Not just romantic, either. It's been an important lesson that's stuck with me my whole life, it still reminds me to be attentive to other people's needs and not just hide in my own head.

My dad is a Linux user so I guess being introduced to Linux lmao

Also the time he built a bluetooth boombox. And the time he modified old Roombas to be remote controlled.

I worked with my dad for 20 years. He taught me almost everything I know about building houses. But I think the two biggest things were, how to deal with tricky clients (this applies to all people, not just clients), and how to come at everything with a relaxed style. He used to say he spent a lot of money in the '60s developing his attitude.

I was a loser who didn't seek a real job until I was 25, and didn't get my shit together and move out until I was 30, but despite all that my dad always loved me and never so much as pushed me. Gentle encouragement from time to time, but always just glad to have his boy around. I live in a different country with my wife now. I have a beautiful daughter and a decent, stable job. We flew my dad out a few years ago and I've never seen him so proud of what I've become. He loved my daughter so much. We took him out to the Canadian Rockies. That trip meant the world to him.

He had a heart attack and died two years ago.

As tragic as it all is, I watched the emotional shit he went through over the way his father raised him, and his father's suicide when I was too young to remember, and he made it a point to make sure I never had to wonder if he loved me or was proud of me. He was.

I hope his soul is flying through the universe somewhere and has seen how much my daughter has grown, and has seen my awesome new house. I sprinkle his ashes around my flower gardens every spring just to keep him around. I hope he's around.

Love you, dad.

My dad did so much right, but his one failing was financial. He was an insurance salesman and had plenty of money when I was very young, but at some point it all dried up and he seemed unable to make more. He didn't starve or anything, but at a certain point my brother had to step in and buy his house or he was going to lose it.

So now, I'm very cognizant of my spending and always having a good cash reserve.

But, he was also extremely generous when he did have money. His favorite way to spend money was on the people he loved and to make them happy.

So now, I also give freely. If it makes someone I love happy, and I can afford it, I'll give them whatever I think might make them smile, if even for a day

The day he left. Watched him pack up his shit and stood at the end of the driveway in tears watching him drive away. He moved out of state, rarely called, almost never visited. I was seven years old.

As a father, I could not dream of doing that. The only thing that piece of shit was good for was an example of what not to do. I love my kids so much, I cannot understand how much of a heartless fuck you'd have to be to just piss off like that. If you've ever done this to your kids, you are a good for nothing piece of shit.

Hope the flames are keeping you toasty you rotten bastard, I'll be up here enjoying my own kids quite a lot!

Who?

When he grabbed my by the throat and lifted me up a wall. Because i hit a door jam with a table leg, while moving it from the living room to the kitchen so he WOULDNT get pissed.

When I was in boy scouts, my dad at one point made a comment to me that our Senior Patrol Leader was "just like me, but older"

What he meant was that our SPL was an immature little shit and I shouldn’t rely on him. What i heard was "Your personal role model is just like you, and you can be as awesome as him if you put the work in."

My dad definitely encouraged my love of computers. He was never as hardcore as most of the people around here, but there’s no doubt I would not be as into them without his influence. Always had a tower for the family around the house, even in the early 90s.

His Apple II got destroyed in a flood sadly. Would love to have it myself now. He would fire it up every few years and run a program be wrote in med school.

I love my dad, but I can only really think about the time he slammed my head through a wall when I was a teenager. I don't even remember what I did that pissed him off enough to do it. It's the only time he ever laid hands on me.

The only one I can think about are financial advises: 1. Do not ever spend more than you have and 2. Never sign something on the street or a the door.

Both have been very useful in life.

When he grabbed me by the throat and pushed me up against a wall.

Realizing that my father was a coward killing goat herders from a billion dollar jet, not a hero like I thought growing up.

When I was starting to hit puberty, my mother got a severe depression, culminating in a suicide attempt. I remember her for the following ten-ish years as just sitting on her chair and reading or in her bed. When she managed to have a shower, it was a great day for her.

My father managed it all. Still had his taxing job, but now doing all the household, cooking, raising the kids and being supportive for my mother. He was there as father, as provider, as a husband. Eventually my mother was healing and back to her former, energetic self.

I don't know how my father did it, honestly. My wife and I are struggling with managing our two children as is, if my wife were out of the equation I'd collapse immediately. Granted, my sister and I were a lot older than my kids are now, when shit hit the fan, but still...crazy impressive.

So yeah, basically he is a role model in perseverance and a lot of other things.

Any good memories of my Dad are overwritten by the child abuse. I would've been better off being raised by a single mother. Today is... complicated.

My dad was a dairy farmer. While I ended up in IT, a field he knew nothing about, he supported me the entire way. He did not understand my field of interest beyond the fact it was something I was interested in.

On the flip side, everything I know about machinery maintenance and repair I have from him. In my current field (an odd mix of It, industrial robotics and heavy machinery.... On ships), this background works well, as it gives me the diverse background needed for such a diverse work place.

I don't think there are anyone else in the company who can do VLAN and LACP trunks AND troubleshoot misbehaving hydraulics.

My dad is... complicated, and I could tell a lot of insane stories. But the memory that is haunting me is how he said "we won't wait when war starts", in Russian. It made no sense. I overheard it as a part of some conversation with my mother (maybe other grown ups as well) when I was a kid and I asked what he meant and he claimed he didn't remember saying that. I believe him that he didn't remember. But it was odd, it's not something he would say. Neither he, nor my mom, nor their friends are political people talking about war, ever. It was said casually, but no one ever casually talked about war or politics over here. This was 25 years ago. I kept thinking about it for years and years again, trying to grasp what it meant, what it might have meant, and why it stuck with me so much, why I couldn't get it out of my head, why I couldn't let it go.

It was also painfully screaming in my head when Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022. It's like it was an eerie foreshadowing but I still don't know. I have so few memories of my childhood, why did this one stay? Why do I see and hear him say this? What did he mean with "we won't wait"? Did he mean we won't wait for the war to start or we won't wait when the war will have started? Both are possible interpretations in the Russian wording. What are we waiting for? Are we still waiting? What should we be doing?

I keep going back to this one stupid sentence and this memory is ringing in my ears. What does it want to tell me to do? I know I need to do something, I just can't figure out what.

My dad wasn't perfect, but he always did what was best for my mom and I. He worked his ass off doing a number of labor jobs (carpentry, mechanic, electrical, plumbing, etc) and was a jack of all trades. He dropped out his sophomore year in the 70s to help support his parents when his dad had a stroke and just kept working the labor jobs. He was well known enough in the plumbing business that when Disney was planning another hotel they asked for him by name to lead the plumbing project.

When all that hard labor caught up with him and he had his back surgery, it threw him on his ass and disability. He still kept working on stuff after recovering, rebuilt his uncle's Willy's he had found, swapping motors out of his truck when he eventually killed it, doing home renovations, everything. All while trying to teach my dumbass some of what he knew so I'd know something useful. I learned a lot from him, but not nearly all of what he knew. He was a stubborn hard ass so he liked things done a certain way and would sometimes get frustrated if I wasn't doing it right, but never in a "I'm going to scream at you because you fucked up" kinda way.

It took me until he was diagnosed with cancer to realize why he had always been a hard ass and pushing me to do better, he didn't want me to follow his footsteps and he stuck doing these hard labor jobs, destroying my body like he did his. Sorry that didn't work out, old man.

It's not really a particular memory of my dad that impacted me, it's basically his whole memory of him that did. I've had lots of great memories with him, but everything he always did was for his family first, he was very selfless. I wouldn't be who I am today without my dad.

Happy father's day, dad. Miss you.

When he died, we all could finally breathe.

My mom would always fuss that I'd drip water on the floor after a shower. After one such fussing, my dad took the time to actually give me advice on how to towel off properly, so as not to drip. (LPT: start from the top, work your way down)

Anyways, he was the more patient parent and would try and help you succeed.

I don't have many happy memories of my father growing up. All he knew his entire life was hard work and he leaned into that, because his dad died when he was eleven. I am grateful to him for a few things he did that made a major impact on my life:

• He and my mom got my eyes fixed when I was four years old, before which I was legally blind.
• He put the first $1000 I ever saw in my hand to pay a college tuition bill so I wouldn't have to quit.
• He made sure I had everything I needed growing up in terms of material needs.

But there are a wealth of shitty memories too. He was drunk for most of my childhood and adolescence and verbally abusive. There were times he'd show up to my baseball or soccer practices and games and beer cans would be falling out of his truck. (Never had an adult intervene there, though.)

Most annoyingly, he and my mom have "borrowed" my car for a year to work for DoorDash. They're too old now to get jobs anywhere else and have to survive.

The best thing I can say about him now is that I know he regrets all of it. On the rare occasions I have him over he always has a gift of some sort. It's usually something small, because they're very poor. Last time it was a container of oatmeal. It's his way of saying sorry, because his stoic, 1940's and 1950's upbringing produced a man who doesn't know how to actually say he's sorry.

My dad, my brother(13) and I (16) were on a resort scuba dive (we borrow their gear, and get a ride on their boat, and follow their leader during the dive). Descending down a line, with my dad following the dive lead, then me, then my brother.

About 60 feet deep, I see my dad jerk suddenly, followed by a bunch of bubbles. I see him grab his octopus... Another spasm and more bubbles.

I watch as he swims down to the dive leader, and grabs his octopus, taking in and releasing a breath. He signals to dive lead he needs to surface. Dive lead grabs his octopus and replaced it with my dad's original regulator... Another spasm, and he begins emergency surfacing. My brother and I follow. Dive lead has a Merry dive all alone.

At the surface, we find that the rubber bits on my dad's equipment (regulator, and octopus) had deteriorated, and broken at depth. He had lungs full of water, and spent the next half hour barfing and coughing it up.

That's about all I got, still brings me to tears twenty some odd years later to just think about it

When I found out he had neglected to tell me that I have an inheritable disease that will suddenly just outright kill me one day, unless I get regular checkups. Other than that there just isn’t that much I know about him, he never told me about himself and we rarely meet.

One time I fell backwards from the ladder to the treehouse my dad built. I summersaulted backwards like twice as I fell but I was completely fine. But the look of worry and how fast he ran is something I'll never forget. It made me realize how much he cares.

I have so many stark lasting memories of my dad, good and bad it’s hard to pick the one with the greatest impact.

Maybe the time I watched him have an allergic reaction to an ssri that ended in 6 cops beating him unconscious and dragging him to jail.

Maybe the time he unprompted pulled $800 out of his wallet and handed it to the lady at the laundry mat who was stressed about paying her rent that month.

Maybe the time my friends and I showed up at 2am with bath salts and he did a little toot with us.

Maybe the time he sat with me in the kitchen until the wee hours of the night playing chess while I cried about being broken up with for the first time.

I flat celebrated my father's death. The upside was he instilled equality of gender well, and considering the 80s that wasn't common around middle USA.

Father's Day is complex for me. Balancing my adult daughter bringing it for me vs memories of mine takes effort.

Jfc some people got some fucked up dads in the comments here, leaving, slamming people through doors and table legs. My dad was okay, he had a bad attitude but I think he understood dedication and hard work and taught me to love it too. Haven't spoken in years, but I think about him now and again.

I came out to him over christmas 2 years ago and that's the last time he's spoken to me. His last words to me before he read my letter were "Love you always"

My father died when I was a baby

I farted in front of him trying to get to the Master bathroom. He caught my left arm and yanked me onto the bed and raped me. I was under 4 years old. I don’t sleep well and my body still hurts at age 34. Don’t remember much.