Happy Father's Day

As we approach Father’s Day 2013, I am distinctly, most poignantly aware that this holiday will most likely be the last I mark while my Dad is on this earth. At 89, feeble, and in hospice care, he will surprise us all if he’s still with us on August 6, his 90^th birthday. As he has often told my sister, he is ready to not be. Weariness has overtaken him.

Because I am who I am, and maybe because of him who raised me, I have made some preparations for this leave-taking. I tend to not like leaving things to the last minute if I can help it. Arrangements are set with the funeral home and even pre-paid. I am grateful that Dad was willing to do this when my mother passed. It makes things much easier for those of us who remain. I have constructed a preliminary service bulletin, pending, of course, the input of my siblings. I have made a first-time attempt at a video retrospective of my father’s life. And this is sadly interesting to me: Dad was born in August 1923 and I have never seen a baby photo or a young child photo of him. Not ever.

I don’t know if his remaining siblings are in possession of such a photo, but I do know neither my siblings or I have one. Perhaps they are lost or never existed. My Dad had a somewhat difficult childhood, growing up on a poor northern Minnesota farm with a cold, reluctant farmer for a dad and an overworked mother of 8, pretty much charged with raising her brood on her own. There are two photos of the home Dad lived in as a boy, with his father and mother and a couple aunts & uncles out front, but Dad wasn’t around yet when these were taken.

I first see Dad as a smiling almost high school graduate. Hard to look at that boy I never knew and see the elderly guy I’m acquainted with now!  He’s then pictured with his siblings, minus the brother who died in a plane crash (one that severely injured my dad as well).  There’s a proud Army-Air Force military man and then another grinning guy, this time with his beautiful bride.  I see him tenderly holding his first-born, a precious look on his face that tells me I was very much wanted.  As were my two brothers and one sister who followed. The little house on Johnson Street – 3 bedrooms, 1 bath – 4 kids! Nobody on HGTV’s “House Hunters” would consider such a thing today, but he was proud to be able to provide it! The new house on Garfield Ave, with the Chevy (in which I took my driver’s test) parked out front (no power steering!- I was sure I’d never manage to parallel park that “boat” in my driver’s test, but I did!). Dad gets progressively older in the photos that follow, as do we all. His kids grow up, they marry, have kids of their own. And their kids have kids! I adore the photos of “The Bobs” – my father, my husband and my oldest grandson. My Dad liked that, too.

My father loved my mother. He loved his children. He loved his grands and his great-grands. I don’t think he ever quite saw himself as an old man, his wife gone on to her reward, and him living out his last days in assisted living. None of us ever do. We are all babes, running around the playground. And then we blink and all the cares of school and jobs and child-raising and life-living are over. For my father, in between his youth and old age was a life made up of honor and perseverance and hard work and wisdom and teaching (with a little bit of humor and dog-loving thrown in!). I am grateful for and have benefitted from every last bit of it.

Thank you, Dad. Happy Father’s Day! I love you, Barb

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” Exodus 20:12