My heart is absolutely shattered. In under five years I've lost a sister and both my parents. Cheryl has lost the same, but also her biological father, between Mom's passing and Dad's. So much loss in such a short time. Yet, we still go on. We will still laugh. We will still love. We are seriously injured but not broken. We will recover. We won't be the same as we were before, but we will incorporate these losses into our lives and go on to find our "new normal." It will happen. I just hate the process.
Dad's funeral was held yesterday, Friday the 23rd. I delivered a eulogy for Kenna and for Mom, so I knew I had to for Dad as well. I just couldn't find the words I needed. It was so sudden and unexpected that I hadn't given it a thought prior to when we began planning his funeral. The night before, I was up until after 3:00 finding my words and putting them together in the right order. Our printer chose this exact time to mess up so I wrote a rudimentary outline on notebook paper and spoke without reading for the most part. When we returned from the services, we found that the printer had spit out the papers nice and neat while we were gone. I think Dad would have gotten a laugh from that. So this isn't exactly what I said, word for word, but this is the copy I wrote the previous night:
Yesterday I sat on my dad’s stool in front of his work bench in the garage listening to Willie Nelson and agonizing over what to say today. It wasn’t long ago when I stood here and spoke at my mother’s funeral, and just three years before that, at my sister Kenna’s funeral. The words came easier when they were about Mom and Kenna, but I couldn’t understand why. Late last night it occurred to me that the words were missing because my dad wasn’t a man of words.
Don’t get me wrong. He loved to talk. Anyone who has walked through our garage in the past several years knows this. If he was in the mood and the topic was of interest to him, he could talk your ear off. But if he felt he had nothing to contribute to the conversation, he was okay with not saying anything. He didn’t always need words.
In the past week, I’ve had numerous people tell me that they learned a lot from my dad. Over and over again, I heard that same sentiment. Some even said they weren’t done learning from him. So I began to think about what Dad taught me, and more importantly, how.
See, Mom gave me her gift of words. She taught me with words. She read me books and told me stories and sang songs to me. When we had problems, we talked about them. When I moved away we would have lengthy conversations on the phone or email one another.
I didn’t have that kind of relationship with my dad, because like I said before, he didn’t always need words. But he taught me by example. He was a hardworking man with a strong work ethic. I can’t remember one single time during my childhood when he called in sick to work. He got up before the sun every morning, went to work, and brought home a paycheck to support his family. We may not have had everything we wanted, but we always had everything we needed. He felt that his role in life was to take care of his family, and he did just that, literally until the day he died.
He taught me as much about the importance of family as my mom did, he just did it in a different way. His way wasn’t as easily recognized and maybe wasn’t as widely acknowledged. But the lessons were there, strong and silent, in the background, just like Dad.
My son was the first male born into the family since my dad, and because I have been a single mom for the majority of my son’s life, my dad played an important role in teaching him “guy things” that I knew very little or nothing about, namely hunting and fishing. One day when Nick was about eight years old, he disappeared. We looked and looked and couldn’t find him anywhere. Just about the time we were starting to panic, the phone rang. Nick was on the other end telling me that he caught a fish but it swallowed the hook and he didn’t know what to do. I told him there weren’t any fish in that nearly dried up, smelly old creek at 6th and Ferguson, but he insisted. He was a boy prone to telling stories so I blew it off as another tall tale and told him he’d better get back to grandma’s house NOW. When he arrived at the house he tried telling us again about his fish but we were so angry at him for taking off and not telling us where he was that we again blew off the fish story.
Finally he decided to go tell his grandpa, who without hesitation said, “Let’s go get your fish, pal.” They hopped in the truck and drove to the tiny little creek just a few blocks from here and sure enough, there was a bullhead catfish no bigger than my hand, that apparently had an affinity for the ham and cheese lunch meat that Nick had used for bait. Dad removed the hook and the two guys brought that fish home. They skinned it and they cleaned it and they filleted it, and while they were eating tiny little pieces of catfish for lunch, we women had to eat crow! Dad knew Nick wasn’t telling a fish tale, and he saved the day for that little boy. (Not so much for the little fish!)
One more thing I want to share with you about my dad is the laughter I remember from my childhood. When Dad found something funny, he would laugh with his entire body and literally slap his knee. When he would tell a joke, the smile would start to sparkle in his eyes before he even reached the punchline. When I was angry or pouting, he would make funny faces at me, and he would laugh even harder when I would get mad at him for making me laugh when I wanted to pout. But it’s one quick-witted, silly response that stands out. I was ten years old and I asked Mom, “What does ‘debate’ mean?” Before she could answer, Dad turned to me with that sparkle of laughter in his eyes and said, “De bait is what you put on de hook to catch de fish with.”
As you leave here today, I hope you think of the things you learned from my dad and the times you laughed with him. Those memories are the best for me, and I hope they are for you as well.
Yesterday I sat on my dad’s stool in front of his work bench in the garage listening to Willie Nelson and agonizing over what to say today. It wasn’t long ago when I stood here and spoke at my mother’s funeral, and just three years before that, at my sister Kenna’s funeral. The words came easier when they were about Mom and Kenna, but I couldn’t understand why. Late last night it occurred to me that the words were missing because my dad wasn’t a man of words.
Don’t get me wrong. He loved to talk. Anyone who has walked through our garage in the past several years knows this. If he was in the mood and the topic was of interest to him, he could talk your ear off. But if he felt he had nothing to contribute to the conversation, he was okay with not saying anything. He didn’t always need words.
In the past week, I’ve had numerous people tell me that they learned a lot from my dad. Over and over again, I heard that same sentiment. Some even said they weren’t done learning from him. So I began to think about what Dad taught me, and more importantly, how.
See, Mom gave me her gift of words. She taught me with words. She read me books and told me stories and sang songs to me. When we had problems, we talked about them. When I moved away we would have lengthy conversations on the phone or email one another.
I didn’t have that kind of relationship with my dad, because like I said before, he didn’t always need words. But he taught me by example. He was a hardworking man with a strong work ethic. I can’t remember one single time during my childhood when he called in sick to work. He got up before the sun every morning, went to work, and brought home a paycheck to support his family. We may not have had everything we wanted, but we always had everything we needed. He felt that his role in life was to take care of his family, and he did just that, literally until the day he died.
He taught me as much about the importance of family as my mom did, he just did it in a different way. His way wasn’t as easily recognized and maybe wasn’t as widely acknowledged. But the lessons were there, strong and silent, in the background, just like Dad.
My son was the first male born into the family since my dad, and because I have been a single mom for the majority of my son’s life, my dad played an important role in teaching him “guy things” that I knew very little or nothing about, namely hunting and fishing. One day when Nick was about eight years old, he disappeared. We looked and looked and couldn’t find him anywhere. Just about the time we were starting to panic, the phone rang. Nick was on the other end telling me that he caught a fish but it swallowed the hook and he didn’t know what to do. I told him there weren’t any fish in that nearly dried up, smelly old creek at 6th and Ferguson, but he insisted. He was a boy prone to telling stories so I blew it off as another tall tale and told him he’d better get back to grandma’s house NOW. When he arrived at the house he tried telling us again about his fish but we were so angry at him for taking off and not telling us where he was that we again blew off the fish story.
Finally he decided to go tell his grandpa, who without hesitation said, “Let’s go get your fish, pal.” They hopped in the truck and drove to the tiny little creek just a few blocks from here and sure enough, there was a bullhead catfish no bigger than my hand, that apparently had an affinity for the ham and cheese lunch meat that Nick had used for bait. Dad removed the hook and the two guys brought that fish home. They skinned it and they cleaned it and they filleted it, and while they were eating tiny little pieces of catfish for lunch, we women had to eat crow! Dad knew Nick wasn’t telling a fish tale, and he saved the day for that little boy. (Not so much for the little fish!)
One more thing I want to share with you about my dad is the laughter I remember from my childhood. When Dad found something funny, he would laugh with his entire body and literally slap his knee. When he would tell a joke, the smile would start to sparkle in his eyes before he even reached the punchline. When I was angry or pouting, he would make funny faces at me, and he would laugh even harder when I would get mad at him for making me laugh when I wanted to pout. But it’s one quick-witted, silly response that stands out. I was ten years old and I asked Mom, “What does ‘debate’ mean?” Before she could answer, Dad turned to me with that sparkle of laughter in his eyes and said, “De bait is what you put on de hook to catch de fish with.”
As you leave here today, I hope you think of the things you learned from my dad and the times you laughed with him. Those memories are the best for me, and I hope they are for you as well.
