Happy Fathers’ Day, Dad…
Dad, you have molded my life.
Your kindness and love for all people shaped me. You pushed for a racially integrated church in our town. Your stand on that caused you to eventually step down as an elder because no one would follow the lead. I remember the time when I was 16 years old in 1974, I watched you address our church in tears because they just would not budge in their ugly opposition to integration — even to allow children of color to be a part of our family. It is indelibly embedded in my mind.
It broke your heart.
You loved working in a pharmacy in a minority community. The interactions and the friendships you had with your customers was so important to you. You couldn’t understand why people were so hard.
How you aged with grace and charm! A D.Pharm who refused to take drugs: no statins, no BP medications — and even very sparingly of antibiotics. You wouldn’t take drugs even to the day you died! (You did allow the hospice nurses administer a little morphine to help you breathe, but even then you weren’t thrilled about it.)
Into your late 80s, you bush-hogged your land, you kept up with the Pharmaceutical journals and studies, you visited nursing homes to lead devotionals and sing to those “old folks” who were 10–20 years your junior, and you visited half-way houses for drug addicts to lead group conversations about God — this was who you were.
Even when you died at our home, a few days before you turned 91, you exhibited grace and faith.
At one point, a month before, you looked up and started singing your second-favorite song, “I’ll Fly Away!” My wife, Terri, was sitting beside you and realized the way your eyes were looking up unfocused and the beatific smile on your face that you probably were about to go. She nearly screamed, “No! Dad, don’t you dare! Not yet! Not yet! I’m not ready for you to go,” and she began crying.
You stopped singing, focused your eyes, and looked directly at her. Do you remember what you said as you patted her hand? “You know you’re going to have to let me go sometime, don’t you?” And then you smiled at her.
And that final night — November 1, 2010 — All Saints Day. You had been sleeping for two or three days, and then your breathing changed. My brothers, their wives, our youngest child, my wife, and I gathered around your bed and sang “I’ll Fly Away” to you.
And when the last verse and last chorus escaped our lips and the echo died away…
you took two deep breaths…
and you flew away — quietly and gently.
You were a grace, a poem, a story, an example of a life-well-lived and well-loved.
We still love you and miss you.
Happy Fathers’ Day.
