It's been a year, and you and I still need to catch up

Hey Daddy. I dropped by to visit for a minute early Thursday morning before coming to Atlanta for another race. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since that night last October when I didn’t get back before you had to go. Some days it seems like it has only been a little while. Other days, it seems like it has been forever.
I miss you, like I still miss Mama. A couple of months ago I turned in the relic of a cell phone the paper had me using for a newer model. When I was moving the numbers over into the new phone, I came to yours in the old one. I guess I’d never really reached a point where I was ready to take it out.
We used to talk about how many times the both of us had something happen and our first thought was, “Wait until Sue hears this one.” I guess it’s sort of like that “phantom pain” people have when a part of them is missing. Or something like that.
Your grandchildren are growing up. Megan graduated from high school in June, which doesn’t seem possible. On my side of the family, we’ve got a son in the Navy learning to work on nuclear reactors and a daughter who just gave birth to your first great-grandchild. Eli has been with us for 3½ weeks now, and I think I’ve already laid down a pretty good foundation for spoiling him.
I’ll have to work hard to match the standards you set in that, but everybody needs goals.
Eli has been a good boy. He fusses a little bit now and then, for the most part he just watches the world go by. I told him the other day as he tried to fight sleep that he should just go ahead and take a nap. “Eating and sleeping and messing up diapers, that’s your job right now,” I said. “It’s not the worst job you’ll ever have, either.”
Work is a zoo, as always. I know you’d probably be pulling for Mark Martin or Matt Kenseth to win the Chase this year, mainly because they drive Fords. Even though that truck you finally had to give up driving was a Chevrolet, you were always a Ford guy.
Well, that and an “anybody but Earnhardt” guy.
I think it’s a shame you didn’t get to go to the track more with me, though, because I am fairly well convinced that you would have liked Dale Earnhardt Jr. if you ever got a chance to know him.
Travel stinks. They’ve had to ban most liquids from airplanes because the world has gone bonkers. It had been a few weeks since I traveled, so when I left to come here I put this vial of lens cleaner in my carry-on bag. The drugstore near my house used to carry it and I love how it works, but they hadn’t had it in a while. They got some in and I had a bottle and had barely used it. But there it was and I just had to throw it away. It was my mistake, I could have just put it in the checked bags, but I just forgot about it.
It’s supposed to rain Friday at the track, but maybe it’ll let up long enough for them to get qualifying in. I remember last year that Friday was a very, very pretty day in Georgia. I was driving back to the hotel to pick up my stuff and head home to try to see you before you left, and the leaves were turning and the skies were as blue as they could be. It was way to pretty too turn out to be one of the worst days a son could ever have, that’s for sure.
They’re doing an OK job keeping up the place where you and Mama are resting. The grass is trimmed up and even though it has turned colder it’s still nice and green. The only reason I don’t cry about you being gone every day is that I know you and Mama are together now, watching me trying to play “Paw-Paw” to Eli and laughing at me when I try to figure out how to hold his little head correctly or know just how hard you’re supposed to rap on his back when he needs to burp.
Don’t worry. I’ll tell him about you guys. He’ll be sad he never really got to know you, but like I said, I don’t think the spoiling gene skipped a generation. All I can promise is that I’ll do the best job I can, because that’s all I ever saw you do.
Love you and miss you, David