An ordinary story from an extraordinary life
I was standing in the checkout at Fresh Thyme with a chuck roast, some root vegetables and a bottle of wine. I wanted to replenish supplies as I’d been staying with my parents all week after my dad’s first-ever hospital stay at age 87. He’d been having some heart pain and shortness of breath. Feeling overwhelmed, I started blurting out small talk with the clerk about why I was cooking for my parents. “Just be glad you have them” she said. “Because when they are gone you will miss them every day”.
That roast was the last meal I cooked for my father.
I feel cheated. Robbed of his wealth of knowledge and capacity to remember details. Robbed of getting to watch him enjoy Christmas at our home, surrounded by a loud, full house of grandchildren and their spouses. Robbed of seeing him have the joy of giving away the screwdriver sets he bought at Menards for the grandkids because “today you need so many different kinds and you never have the right one.” The night he died, he made sure those gifts were at my house and ready to go.
We all knew his ticker was on a timer. But we also thought we’d have more time. And now we will be missing him every day.
Yet Dad died like he lived - no fussing - just get it done. It was just after 3 am and he called my cell phone to wake me up. “I wouldn’t have called, but I’d kind of like to sip on a little ice water.” Classic dad. He never wanted to be a bother. He was sitting in his favorite chair, in the house he lived in since he was 11, in front of the fireplace he loved. It was decorated for Christmas and just a few days before he was telling the chairlift sales guy how all the field stone was hand split from rocks we gathered over many years while working the ground.
I covered him in the quilt his mother cross stitched as their wedding gift. It was that time in the night where the world is silent. The artificial light from the barnyard filtered through the curtains while we chatted. He was telling me about when he and a friend would steal overgrown cucumbers from his mother’s garden, use a ladder to climb to the top of the milk house and dive bomb them into the large cement stock tank which was special because it was shared by both cows and draft horses. “It was WW2, so dive bombing was the thing to do” he said in his characteristic “you should know this” tone. It was another ordinary story from an extraordinary life.
One minute a discussion of well water and horse pulling and the next he was surely talking to God who no doubt welcomed him with the words “Well done my good and faithful servant.” In that dark and quiet moment I expected him to open his eyes and finish the story. But he didn’t come back to me or to the family he was so proud of. He very intently knew where he was going. His faith in God’s promise of eternal life never wavered. And he ran the race hard up until that promise was fulfilled.
Dad was an outsized individual. He was big and strong and so smart. He set an incredibly high standard for the meaning of hard work and this underpinned everything he did and everything he passed on to his four daughters, four sons-in-law and twelve grandchildren.
The night before he died we were reminiscing about his schedule: rise at 5, milk cows, eat breakfast (lots of eggs and bacon never killed anyone) and change into a suit. Hurry to the office (two speeding tickets), return home to eat dinner, milk again and finish with an evening board meeting, fixing equipment or working in the fields until after dark when it was planting or harvest time. This was what I knew to be ‘normal’ growing up.
He could chase down and club a groundhog with one hand, and later quietly scratch your back with the other and say, “good job.” He told me just a few nights ago that a “barnyard education never ends”. This is true because he continued to be a sponge — now living his life through the careers and aspirations of his children and grandchildren and enjoying all the details.
Every daughter, every son-in-law, every grandchild has stories, big, funny examples of the things Dad did or said that might sound like tall tales but were known to be true. I joked that his life was one long OSHA violation and the fact that he — or any of us for that matter — were never seriously injured is nothing short of a miracle.
Dad finished strong. This year’s corn and bean harvest were record breakers. His garden, despite his lack of energy, was a bumper crop and we were canning tomatoes and freezing corn like never before. To the very end he was reading and learning new things and I can’t count how many times he explained to me the special concoction he read about to nourish his young tomato plants.
His attitude is best reflected in what he said to my niece when she reminded him that due to his heart it was time to throw out the salt shakers. “Well...we always have pepper,” he said. With dad there was always a no nonsense way through and if there was ever a question he lived by the words he always told my boys when they’d drive away: “Do the right thing”. When I left for college there was one piece of paper left on my desk. It’s probably the only letter dad ever wrote to me and it said: “Work hard and sleep well.”
Dad’s father immigrated from Germany at age 16, and we still maintain contact with relatives there. When informed of the news, their message was on point: “We have always admired your dad. He was active to the end, multi-skilled and family came first....to be allowed to fall asleep at home after a long, fulfilled life without any suffering, that is a grace.”
Indeed we thank God for the gift of my dad and the grace that brought him to his final home.
“Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” John 11:26
