I want to start off by thanking everyone for coming
out today. I know that Dad…as modest as
he was…would be surprised to see this kind of turn out. For those of you who
don’t know me, I’m one the quiet one in the family - but somehow I keep finding
myself up here. After our mom passed dad
came to me and asked if I wouldn’t mind saying a few words for her at the
funeral. As strong as he was, I guess he
knew he wouldn’t be able to remain composed enough to do it, but somehow he thought
I could. So here we are again, but this
time he’s not around to ask me…but it seems right. Hopefully I won’t disappoint him too much.
What’s been great over the last several days,
especially last night, was hearing all of the stories about dad and how much he
genuinely affected the people he came in contact with. As I listened to everyone, two distinct
themes kept recurring over and over. One
was CARS…and the other was how people’s impression of him changed once they got
to know him better. Dad could be quite
an imposing figure…downright scary when it comes down to it…but all it took was
just a little time with him to discover the teddy bear just below the
surface. Don’t get me wrong…dad could be
dominating force when he needed to be.
As one of three boys growing up…believe me…I can attest to that. But once you got by that gruff exterior you
couldn’t ask for a better brother, father, son, and friend.
I think it was fifteen years ago…Mom and Dad were
living in Georgia at the time…I wrote them both a letter. I sent it for no other reason than to thank
them for being such wonderful parents. I
couldn’t say it to them in person because I knew I would choke and mess up half
of what I was trying to say. You know
what it was? Have you ever had one of
those moments when you figure something out that’s been right there in front of
your face the whole time, but for whatever reason it’s alluded you until it
finally crystalizes in your mind? Something
that makes you go…HUH. I had one of those when I realized that you can’t
really understand your parents until you have children of your own. You get part way there when you get married,
but you don’t really fully appreciate them until you’ve experienced parenthood for
yourself. My wife Kim was expecting our
third child at the time and I was seeing my parents in a whole new light, so I
needed to tell them thank you. At the
same time I was beginning to understand something else about Dad. He had a way of teaching, influencing, giving
direction without you knowing that’s what he was doing. He was the master of subtlety and making you
believe you’ve figured something out for yourself.
Let me give you an example. We’ve already mentioned cars, so let’s use
that. I can remember vividly being with
dad underneath one his cars parked in front of our house in cherry Point. It was cold outside, a light rain was
falling, there were pea-sized gravel boring holes into the back of my head and
I wanted to be anywhere but there. We
were trying to remove a starter or alternator and there was this one obstinate
bolt that was impossible to get to and we couldn’t get a ratchet on it. We worked for hours and hours trying to get
that bolt off…me getting angrier and angrier as time went on…when suddenly it
came loose and the part was free. I
learned two things that day, the first, there was NO WAY I wanted to have
anything to do with repairing cars when I grew up. But the second thing I learned about…without dad
saying a word…was determination.
Tenacity. Sticking with things to
the end. HUH
I also learned from him that sometimes it’s what you
DON’T say that really matters. I can’t
ever recall dad voicing derogatory remarks about anyone. I’m sure he had some…don’t we all…but he mostly
kept them to himself. Sometimes I would even
try to bait him…ask him a leading question about someone I knew was ripe for
ridicule, but he’d just ignore me or change the subject. HUH
He showed me that commitment wasn’t just a goal or
something to strive for. It was a duty. Twenty-four years in the military. Twenty years at AT&T. Married for Fifty years. The man was a constant…for everybody, but he
never once bragged about it or hinted that was what a successful career was all
about. HUH.
I told a story at mom’s funeral about how I came
home from college one day…heartbroken from a breakup with a girl…and poured my
eyes out to mom who just calmly stroked my head and told me everything would be
alright, then after a while she said she needed to go to the grocery store and
she drove to the nearest gas station and poured her eyes out over the phone to dad. What I didn’t say then was that there’s a
part two to that story. It wasn’t much
longer after mom returned that dad showed up at the house. I asked him what he was doing home so early
and he told me that he had this van he had been tinkering around with and since
he heard I was home he’d like to take advantage of that and get me to help him
with it. I said sure…still kind of
numb…so he changed his clothes and we set about tearing into the engine. After a while mom brought us sandwiches and
drinks and we ate in silence. When it turned dark and he brought out the flood
lamps so we could keep going even longer.
We must have worked on that car until past midnight…and you know what…to
this day I have no idea what we did to it.
But during that time dad never said a word about my break up, or asked
me probing questions like “so, how’s everything going?” It wasn’t until years later that I discovered
mom had told him, but that night when I finally climbed into bed, I fell right asleep
and rested peacefully. HUH.
The last few weeks of dad’s life you could tell he
was doing his best to put on a brave face, though he was struggling and deeply
discouraged. We all were doing our best
to encourage him …convince him that all he needed was to have just a couple
good days in a row, that’s all it would take for him to turn the corner and he
would eventually be on his way to coming home again. But we were wrong…and once again dad found a
way to show me what was right. I was
with him that last night. He was having
a relatively peaceful evening. His nurse
and I were reconnecting some leads he had pulled loose in his sleep when suddenly
he sat up in his bed and sneezed hard, four times. Instinctively three words popped into my head
and before I could say them out loud he was gone. Later on I was trying to make sense out of what
had happened…that he could be gone…experiencing a variety of emotions all at
once. Then I thought of how weird it was
he sneezed like that…four times…once for my older brother, once for my younger
brother, once for my little sister, and once for me. And those words that were on the tip of my
tongue that I never got to say…God Bless You.
HUH.
Sometimes we tend to associate meaning to things for
reasons that make no sense, and I may be guilty of that here, but in my mind
dad found a way to put my mind at ease with a little bit of help.
I love you dad…we all do…and we’ll miss you
terribly. Give mom a hug for us.