My Father's Death

Since I was only three years old when my father died, my memories of him are a combination of the few photographs we have of him, along with a few mini-video clips in my mind. I can't recall the sound of his voice, and that makes me sad. I wish I had more to work with.
The memories take place on the farm we lived on until he died. I recall a time we were in the sauna. I would have been about two. I was sitting in a small tub, splashing water and he was singing a silly song in Finnish, called "Ukko Noah", which means, "Old Man Noah". I also remember a ride out to the garbage dump in the woods behind our farm. Our German Shepherd, Wolf, went down into the valley and I was afraid for him, and my dad called him back.
I remember when a mangy old stray tomcat came to our property and tormented our barn cats. My Dad shot it off the barn (they did things like that back then), and my sister, who was five, took it by the tail, swung it over her head like a lasso, and tossed it into a puddle. This made me and all the kids in the neighbourhood laugh hysterically, for some reason.
The other vignette occurred when our dog, Wolf was hit by a car. He was badly injured and in the ditch. It was a hot summer morning, and I remember walking on the gravel driveway in my barefeet, wearing only my pajama bottoms (I was three). I remember he sent me in the house. Then he shot Wolf. (You'd think he always walked around with a rifle).
The final memory I have is of his funeral. I don't recall the moment when my Mom told us he had been in a car accident, although she did. I don't remember visiting him in the hospital for the month before he died. They had to tell my mom through an interpreter that he had died, we were such new immigrants. At the funeral, I remember touching his face in the casket. It was so cold.
That's sad, isn't it? Only a handful of memories of someone I should know so well.
I think children should go to funerals, even if they're very young, because it helps them to understand death.
This may seem like a strange custom, but Finnish people take pictures at funerals. I'm actually glad of that because it helped me have closure about his death. At around age nine, I was having a few dreams that my Dad was still alive. I wanted it to be true. I didn't care if he had left us, I just wanted him to be alive. At that age you start to understand the permanence of death.
The fact that I remembered touching him, and that we had a picture of me in my Mother's arms, with my sister standing beside my Father's open casket (in a sense, our last family photo), helped me accept the truth and finality of his death.