Yesterday, my thoughts were all about my mother. Today I’m thinking of my father Marvin, on his 9^th yahrzeit. As so many of us who are children of the greatest generation, there is an uncomfortable relief I feel that he is not here to see the country he loved and fought for destroyed.

The post-war world of tomorrow that fueled my father’s dreams and was passed on to me is gone. I cry for the America they passed on to us that is no longer.

My father’s favorite expression was “It’s your America,” emblematic of a time and place, a post-war spirit he maintained all his life.

This was so important to him that my brother and I had it inscribed on his grave.

He would use that expression for a wide range of situations whether in response to my telling him I needed to miss one of our regular Sunday visits to march in the gay Pride Parade, when he’d exclaim Its Your America!  and utter it with the same enthusiasm if one wanted to indulge in that extra slice of caloric rich cake – Hey, why not, It’s Your America.

Silly or important, freedom of choice was the American way.

It’s your America, he would exclaim- a country defined by its generosity of spirit, opportunity, openness, and tolerance to be and do whatever you wanted.

My father had an extra element of sunny optimism that gave him what can best be described as a “can-do” ism that once defined Americans.

That America, his America, is what he fought for in WWII, and what his family and my mothers family on the Homefront sacrificed for.

My father’s life was profoundly shaped by that war and the post-war experience, which influenced his attitudes and expectations, one that he believed enabled him to live out the American Dream.

I cry at my father’s grave, inscribed with his favorite saying  “It’s your America,”  a phrase filled with boosterish possibilities of the greatness of our nation, where anything is possible.

No Daddy, today, “it’s  not  my America.”

I miss you, and I miss America.