Did I love my father? Since 1998, I've asked myself this question on every Father's Day.

The day was a good one. My 20-year-old son got me a card and 24 bottles of bottled water (I drink water like a fish) and my 23-year-old daughter and I went out for dinner. I have great kids.

I'm an imperfect father. I obsess, worry about my grown children, still tell them to be careful!! and fret when I think they're taking on too much in their young lives. But there's one thing I'm very proud of: My children can talk to me.

We actually have conversations that are meaningful, dialogue that's interesting and they know I'm open to it 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

My father wasn't perfect either. He was a hard worker -- worked at a distillery in Lawrenceburg, Ind., during the day, then came home and attended to our small farm close to East Enterprise. He literally worked from sunup to sundown.

I don't ever remember having a real conversation with him. When growing up, he would tell me what to do ("cut the grass," "feed the cows," "shut up and go to bed") but we never really talked. I knew nothing about his life, his dreams or how he felt about things. I didn't think too much about it at the time, it was just how he was.

I grew up, got married and had two children. My father retired from the distillery, sold the cattle, gave up growing tobacco and started a simpler farm life with my mother.

My wife and I would take the kids to visit their grandparents every couple weeks. Like my mother, my father adored his grandchildren and would spend hours playing and talking to them.

And he wanted to talk to me too. We talked about the weather, about my car or about where I was working. It was all superficial talk. Perhaps if I had known him better, I would have asked how it felt being retired and having time on his hands. But I already knew the answer to that question. I could tell he hated it. For me, it would have been meaningful to talk about that feeling, that emotion -- but for him, it would just be awkward. He didn't like to talk about that kind of stuff.

As my father got older, he started becoming forgetful. Eventually, that became alarming. One time he went out to the mailbox to get the mail and ended up going to a neighbor's mailbox miles away. One Sunday afternoon I was with him in the barn and he had difficulty finding his way out of it.

Something was going horribly wrong. None of us wanted to say the word Alzheimer's, but I think we knew that's what it was.

My mother took care of him as best she could until Dec. 30, 1994. On that morning, he threatened to kill her.

The ambulance took him to the hospital where he was tied down in the bed. I spent New Year's Day 1995 with him. He was out of his mind. On occasion he would tell me to "Get out!" ­ then say "Run for your life!"

I tried to calm him down. I brought up the farm, automobiles, the catfish in his lake -- things that interested him -- and we actually did connect on occasion. Sometimes my words would relax him a bit and he would fall asleep.

It's a day I won't forget. Those talks, those conversations were probably the best I've ever had with my father, a man who at that point in his life didn't even know who I was.

On Jan. 27 of that year, my father was released to the nursing home in Vevay, Ind., where he would spend the rest of his life. After leaving the hospital, he was no longer violent. My mother would visit him every day. She would bring him food to eat and music to listen to.

Sometimes my kids would go with me to visit him but toward the end of his life, I mostly went alone. When he was asleep, I never woke him up. I just sat in the chair beside him sometimes touching his hand. Sometimes when driving to the nursing home, I would drive past it, unable to force myself to pull the car into the driveway.

My father died on Feb. 18, 1998. I remember crying at his funeral.

If you can love a man you never really knew, then I guess I loved my father. I have a lot of respect for his hard work and his love for my children. I appreciate the basic way he tried to take care of his family ­ by putting food on the table.

I have learned from him too. He has taught me to talk and communicate with my kids about real life before it's too late.