The life and trials of a growing Christian - Day Ninty Four

Well, today is April 1st or April fools Day to many. I don't find a lot of humor in this day because it's the seventeenth anniversary of my father's death. He wasn't my birth father but he was good to me. He wasn't perfect, but again, he was good to me, he loved me. I remember when I got beat up pretty bad by three people, he showed up at the hospital and saw me all bloody with stitches, a broken tooth, and a broken nose and he got so livid that I thought he was going to go out looking for the people who did it and kill them. I know it hurt him to see me all swollen and disfigured. I also remember when we moved from Northern Virginia to Caroline, which is in Central Virginia. We were at a little country store a couple of weeks after hunting season started so you can kind of guess what kind of people were also there and I called out "hey dad can I get some chips?", which wouldn't have been a big deal except my dad was black and I'm white. Seeing all of those people stare at us with their mouths dropped wide open with those hateful looks on their faces was priceless.
My dad didn't teach me a whole lot about doing things with my hands, because he didn't do things with his hands but I remember getting all of those late night lectures at the dinner table, and I wish I would have listened to a lot more of them than I did.
When I was twenty, I got married. My ex-wife and I just got up and went to the justice of the peace and got married. I called my parents and told them about it and my relationship with my dad was never the same after that. He wanted to give us a wedding party and it hurt him that I didn't tell him first. Less than a year after that, he was in a hospital bed dieing. I never got to make amends with my dad and that stinks.
What's worse than that is my dad wasn't saved. He was Catholic as a child but I don't remember him ever talking about Jesus or salvation. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.