Eulogy for Bill Gutjahr (Dad)

Chris Gutjahr
Jul 23, 2017 · 3 min read

May 17, 1922 - November 17, 2013

Read aloud at my father’s memorial service.

I want to talk about my experience with dad’s dying. For the last two years dad was failing. After multiple hospital stays he was diagnosed with lung cancer. When dad chose not to have treatment he requested in home hospice care. For dad, choosing hospice meant choosing death. He stopped. Stopped trying to get stronger, stopped going to movies, plays, stopped going out to eat, stopped going to church. While dad was in the hospital he was trying to live. When he chose hospice he became a dying person. Dad was such a black and white person. Wasn’t there something gray, in the middle between life and death? I was angry with him. He could live until he died couldn’t he? I tried to convince him to die the way I want to die. I tried to convince him for three months and he wouldn’t budge. He was wrapping things up, tying loose ends and as he said, “Fading away.”

As dad was dying I learned a lot about love. I had to let go of the death I want for myself and accept the death that dad chose for himself, in order to be with him, to be present in his dying. Often it was hard. I didn’t know how to be with him in the silence or with the TV blaring. I had to listen and believe it was truly OK to say the wrong thing or misunderstand what he wanted. Sitting together watching PBS news, old reruns of the Golden Girls and Mash, was love. He taught me how to clean the humidifiers so someone would know how to do it when he was gone. It was love to listen to his painstakingly detailed directions and not tell him to give me the abridged version.

We talked about ways we were similar. We both loved photography, Feldenkrais, researching things and people we were interested in, wondered about social issues, were interested in world religions and gardening. I knew that he loved me and he knew that I loved him. Helping him with intimate things like pulling down his pants so he could go to the bathroom, wiping him, were rituals of love, and a way to grieve and say goodbye.

The last time dad went to hospice respite care he and I talked about using that time to practice dying, taking the liberty to not eat, to not get up. He said little in the two and a half days before his death after he returned from hospice respite care. Once he opened his eyes and said, “It’s easier than I thought.” At first I didn’t know what he meant but realized he was talking about dying.

Dad died while Cathy and I were at church. His body was lying in bed when we got to mom and dad’s house. His left eye was slightly open and I felt that a little of his spirit was still there. I kissed his forehead as I had many times when he was alive and stayed with him until the men from the funeral home came to take his body away. I don’t know what dad thought would happen to him after he died. I told him that I needed to believe his spirit would be present with me so that I could talk with him when I needed to. He said that was OK and I have.

I learned about love from my family too. Each family member was present for my father in their own way. I want to thank all of them. I want to thank dad’s dear church friends Austin, Clara and Bill Donaldson whose sweet spirit lives on beyond death. I especially want to thank my mother Corinne Gutjahr for loving and caring for dad until the end. I am thankful for this time together with friends and family to honor dad’s life.

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