Good Moments of the Last Few Weeks

The kids with the giant bear from Granny and their new ninja weapons.  We'll save them for a birthday party or something.  The "Haunted Ninja Training Grounds" party had to be postponed.

Jackson got to play co-pilot on our flight to OKC.

I finally got to meet my nephew Alex (so in love with him!)

Adorable cowboy

We went trick or treating last night in our friend's neighborhood.  Our city does it Sundays, so we joined them, 10 minutes away in a different city for trick or treating that actually happens on Halloween!

Dad's Funeral

 

We had my dad's Memorial Service at the church that he loves.  He started going to the Church of the Servant when his parents lived in OKC and has felt at home there ever since. They have a beautiful chapel there full of plant life and it was a lovely setting.  I remembered once attending a funeral where they had laid out tissues all through the chapel and I thought that it was so considerate.  We sort of did the same, having baskets of tissues available as you walked in.  For me it wasn't necessary. It truly was more of a celebration of his life and a comfort that he continues to live.  He has returned to our heavenly home and feels more peace than we ever know in this earthly realm. I have never needed to know this more than I have this week and I feel such an assurance that it is real.

My brother John amazed all of us with his willingness to stand and give the eulogy himself.  His experience as a writer is mostly comedic and that certainly helped us in holding back the tears. I have had several requests for a written transcription of that eulogy, so with his permission I am including it here.

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My father was found with the outdoor faucet running, a squeegee in place, and a bucket full of soap suds. He wanted to surprise Mom by taking care of a bunch of projects around the house while she was away in Wisconsin. He didn’t quite have the chance to finish up washing the windows, but his death was perfectly symbolic of his life, always taking care of the people around him. His life philosophy was a simple one, which he recited to us kids too many times to count. “Do unto others as you would have done to you.” I hope that his example of selfless treatment of his fellow man can be a legacy that we can can all carry with us.

I know I will carry with me fond memories of a great man. Yes, a great man, indeed, but not a man without issues. Dad was a man who liked to be in control of the situation. Most of the time that worked out pretty well for all involved, but it only became clear to us, just how fundamentally important to his being it was, once we arrived a bit unprepared on a family trip to Europe.

Under the assumption that everyone in Europe speaks enough English to get along, we headed off to small town Italy, to meet a missionary friend. We were only going to be on our own for two days in Italy, but Mom had the forethought to buy a “Lean Italian Quick” book. Dad didn’t need to bother with reading it, because he always just sort of knew how to deal with every situation that came along.

Mom and I learned all we could from the book, which was grazi, prego, uno, due, tre, and, quattro. We found a small restaurant in Parma, and decided that a town named after cheese would probably have good Italian food. We managed to get a table and ordered quattro glasses of water. The waiter asked “Con gas?”, and Dad proudly answered “Si, Qauttro!”. With a bit of a confused expression the waiter asked again, “Con gas?”, to which Dad explained slowly and clearly, that we need “Quattro”. The waiter shook his head and decided that the Americans would just have to live with his own decision about the carbonation. Dad always imagined the waiter telling his friends about the family that insisted on exactly 4 bubbles in their water.

After we finished our meal, we headed off to Modena, to meet our missionary friend. We had decided to meet at the main train station of the town, so now we just needed to ask some locals where that was. Mom and I looked it up in her book, and we practiced and practiced, “Dove Stazione Treno?”, “Dove Stazione Treno?”. Dad would pull up beside people on the street, and we would ask “Dove Stazione Treno?”, and then they would tell us. Unfortunately, we weren’t prepared for the fact that they would answer in Italian. But we found that many Italians would at least point while they explained, so we just had to ask often enough, and we finally made it.

The missionary assisted us in finding a hotel room for our one night, which unfortunately cost more than the rest of the trip combined, because Modena happens to be the hometown of Lucciano Pavorati, who happened to be throwing a big concert that night with Eric Clapton, and dozens of other major stars. We got to go the concert, but we were all exhausted by end of 24 hours of flying and then navigating Italy. We woke up the next day and packed up for our easy drive up to Switzerland to visit Dad’s foreign exchange brother Christian. As we were about to depart, Dad panicked as he made the discovery that he had lost all of our passports. We tore our luggage and the hotel room apart, as we desperately searched for our documents. I remember thinking, how am I going to find work in Italy as an undocumented alien, who can only say “Dove Stazione treno?”

Finally we gave up the search and Dad checked us out of the hotel. We were a bit relieved when the hotel clerk handed him all four of our passports back, since it is not uncommon in Europe, that the hotel keeps some collateral. That little episode set the tone for the day, though.

The first task in getting to Switzerland was to get gas into the car. A simple task for a car guy, and Dad was a car guy. Dad loved his cars so much that when he had to trade in the BMW for a minivan, he pulled off the blue and white emblem and, lucky enough, it popped right into place over star on the hood of the van. Mostly we got confused stares driving around town, but Dad’s favorite story to recount was when one guy asked if he could check out the interior and then exclaimed, “wow, this looks just like the Chrysler model!”

So Dad the car guy pulls our rental Ford into the Italian gas station, and he searches for the gas cap release button. After a few minutes of searching the cockpit, he decides in Italy they must put it in the trunk of the car. At this point, from the passenger seat, Mom sees a lever with a gas symbol and pulls it, and asks, did that do it?. Confidently, Dad says, “No, I found it, they put it in the trunk in Italy”. Getting access to the gas tank was a great accomplishment, but then Dad discovered that there was no way to pay at the pump and the station seemed closed. So on we went to the next gas station, where Dad struggled a long time in the trunk before he had to admit that maybe Mom had found the button to the tank in a more reasonable place.

With a full tank of gas, and a wallet full a Lira it was time to call the Swiss brother to let him know that we’re on our way. Unfortunately Dad hung up on his Swiss brother so many times from the pay phone, that we weren’t sure if we would have enough money to pay for the highway toll. It turns out, Dad thought the European ringing tone was a busy signal, so his poor confused Swiss brother was wondering why all day long someone would call, and hang up before he could answer.

Somehow Dad managed to find a building along the highway where he figured he could ask if we had enough Lira to make it to Switzerland. We waited in the car as he struggled to get in the door. Dad could tell that the office was open, because he heard talking from within, so he tried every way he could imagine to get through those doors. Finally, after at least ten minutes of struggling, a head popped through an open window that said, “PUSH”.

Dad went in and came back out and let us know that we did not have enough money, but that it was important for us to know, that in America, public doors always open to the outside, which is critical for fire safety.

That was our favorite experience for all four of us. Watching Dad totally out of his element. Dad somehow not knowing how to care of everything. We just didn’t get to experience that ever before or ever again, and we have laughed about it since, but at that moment it, it was terrifying for the family. Suddenly, the guy we relied on for everything couldn’t be relied on for anything.

There were a few other times when Dad didn’t quite do the right thing. I know I’ll never forget being a small child on a white water rafting trip, leaning backwards over the edge to look for fish, when Dad’s hand reached out to pull me back inward to safety, but instead on accident (sorry Dad, accidently) pushed me into the frigid Colorado river. The river guide yelled for me to get my feet up and point them down stream. The situation wasn’t great, but it was made much worse for that poor river guide when Dad jumped right into the river to save me.

And I know Dad wasn’t supposed to fly out to Utah just to spend a few minutes with Christine in the airport before she flew off to Germany for a mission.

And I know Mom would say, you are not supposed to talk on the cell phone while driving with your whole family in car. And when your second cell phone rings, you certainly shouldn’t answer that one and start steering with your elbows.

Dad could remember every meal at every restaurant he ever ate, but he did end up renting the same movies back to back sometimes, because he would forget that we had seen them the week before. He could also remember every sign along the highway, so he won every single game of alphabet on trips to Dallas. He would even tell us ahead of time, gonna pick up my Q in Gainesville, and my Z in Denton.

And Dad shouldn’t have told us that his little computer projects for clients that happened to be on the way were just going to take 10 minutes. We got stuck in boring offices for hours and hours waiting for 10 minute projects, but Dad was always there for us. It was a bit embarrassing for me in high school, when Dad would show up to every little indoor soccer game I had. And when I started playing again at age 30, it was a little bit ridiculous for him to show up to all of those games, too. But that’s the kind of guy Dad was. He was always there for us.

And when Dad went to pick up Mom for their first date, he probably should have found a car that actually had a passenger seat. Since the passenger seat from his Triumph Herald was out for repair, Dad offered her the option of sitting next to him on a blanket on the floorboard, or in the backseat. She chose the spot on the floor next to him, so that’s when he knew she was the one.

Dad says Mom’s dad wasn’t convinced, though, that he was the one. That’s why Grandpa gave him a job running the computer at the insurance company, on the night shift. Although Grandpa’s efforts to make this romance too inconvenient to be viable, it did give Dad an entry into the computer business, which he remained in for the rest of his life. In fact, he was quite shocked when he visited the computer museum to see that he had worked at some point in time on every single model in the place.

When Mom and Dad got married, he didn’t have any money, but he worked really hard to clean up the basement apartment in the women’s club where he was the caretaker. He removed the murphy bed, and created a proper bedroom in the closet with a mattress that touched only three of the four walls, and he lovingly spray painted the shower pea green. He worked very hard to get everything just right for his beautiful bride.

Dad always told the same jokes, over and over, and for some reason, he always laughed out loud when delivering the punch line, as if he’d never heard the joke before. Although his frequent puns were truly awful, he did tell one story that always put a smile to my face. During college, Dad found the time between working 7 different jobs to volunteer to counsel students in the High School Equivalency Program. The students were the children of migrant farm workers that had dropped out to help out in the fields. When Christmas time rolled around, he decided that they should have the chance to go home to their families, which meant he drove them from Nebraska and dropped them off at their homes throughout the country from California to Southern Texas. Somewhere along the way, one of the students yelled out to him GreenGo! Startled by this, Dad stood up turned around and yelled back, “what did you call me?!” To which the student replied, “The traffic light is green, go!”

Dad always worked hard for everyone around him. He always said that anything worth doing, is worth doing right. And that is what he did. When I think about the physical struggles of a man who had severely burned his leg as a small child, was hit by a car on his bike, had a metal rod in his femur after a car accident, and had his leg crushed by a 9 foot glass wall, I can’t remember him once complaining.

Dad, you were a model of how a good man should be, and I’m so proud to be your son.

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That last line was the hardest for him.

Dad's long time friend and the patriarch of our stake, Ken Hutto, also spoke and shared the plan of salvation.  He did such a lovely job. Our friend Susan Poston sang "How Great Thou Art," accompanied by Zach Tanner. The pastor also said comforting and welcome words.

As I was greeted afterward by so many dear friends I couldn't help but actually have fun.  There were many tears shed as we shared our great loss together, but also great joy in seeing loved ones that we haven't seen in such a long time.