20 years ago, we moved into this house. While our team (Joe, my dad, our contractors, and lots of family members) had been working on it since January, Memorial Day weekend marked that the farmhouse was ready for our family to move in.
I’m sitting on the front porch of that house on a weekend similar to that one 20 years ago, and with the exception of five more kids, a few dogs and barn cats, lots of cows, and a few career changes, the clear blue sky and easy south wind (that still blows the dust from the gravel road that was promised to be blacktop in “just a few months”) reminds me of how I felt on that weekend: full of questions, full of hope for this new era, wondering what was going to happen now that this was the life we were leading.
I have that same feeling today because my life has shifted once again. My dad died two weeks ago, and today’s Memorial Day festivities churned up a lot of feelings that I had been doing a great job shoving down in the last few weeks. At the service, I watched members of the Honor Guard, dressed in familiar sharp white shirts and dark blue hats, march with the gait of older men, one I’d seen before. That familiarity came with a wave of grief. In his younger days, my dad marched every Memorial Day through many rural cemeteries, marching as one of the “younger vets” with the WWII veterans. He then marched with a careful gait as one of the “older ones.” In recent years, he would still attend, but steadied himself next to Mom, always standing to salute. Today, he had a new role. Dad was a part of those we were remembering, and that really stung.
So it got me thinking about how I was remembering my dad on this Memorial Day.
Preparing for his funeral, Mom mentioned to the pastor, who didn’t know Dad well, that “productivity was his hobby.” Boy, do I relate to that. Walking back from the Memorial Day service, I pushed my sadness aside and made a mental list of all the things I wanted to accomplish on this day off. We drove home past families getting ready for cookouts and such. I chuckled thinking of Memorial Day as a kid. Dad always spent the morning with the Honor Guard but wasn’t met with a cookout or a day of golf. We weren’t a family of fun. We were/are a family of doers. So today, I carried on the tradition. This afternoon, I ticked off small tasks as our son mowed the grass, our oldest worked in the barn, Joe mowed hay, and generally all of us prepped for the week ahead. As I crossed off the last item on the list: “wash the upstairs windows,” I stopped and remembered Dad fondly. When we were moving into this house, Dad thought we would just need “a few new windows and some carpet.” Well, when Dad got down to business and started some demolition, his commitment to productivity shone. We quickly learned that it was going to be more than just a “few windows.” Dad wanted to help make this house our home, and left with a sledgehammer and his own devices, he paved the way for us to have a new house from top to bottom.
I don’t know if I thanked him enough for that.
My kids have grown up on this farm, running in the yard with the sprinkler going (unless it was a dry year), working cows in our barn just down the road, riding bikes or shooting hoops or waiting for the bus in the huge driveway (unless there was equipment nearby). Dad helped us plant the trees where my kids lay in a hammock, put together the trampoline (the first one) where they jump or tan or hang out. He got us just a little jag of concrete from the bin project so that the kids could have little more of pavement to play on. Sometimes we would come home from an afternoon at the pool or wherever to find him string trimming our yard or even mowing the grass. It was never out of frustration, just presence and productivity.
I don’t know if I thanked him for any of this either.
Early on in our time on the farm, we had lunch with Dad nearly every day from the time we moved into this house. Dad would never NOT come inside when he first got to the farm and would never NOT say goodbye when he was leaving for the evening. I took for granted throwing a kid in the semi with him to take a load to town while other kid(s) napped. He’d sit outside after a hot day and not necessarily talk your ear off, but he’d share a wise word or report on something he’d heard on the news.
In the last decade, we moved into a less “on the farm” phase with Dad as his disease progressed, but there was still a constant presence. My mom mentioned today all the pancakes he cut (with a knife and fork—pizza cutters were for the lazy!). On the night the kids would sleepover, she would make the pancakes as fast as she could while Dad cut them in small pieces for the littlest of kids. We’d force him to play board games, took walks around the block, and enjoyed countless bowls of Whitey’s White Chocolate Raspberry ice cream. While his visits to my house were fewer, his constant space in our lives remained the same.
Did I thank him for that presence?
As I sit here, listening to the windchimes dear friends gave me in his honor, I blink away tears. Grief is hard. It is sneaky. It’s masked by thankfulness for all the friends and family who came to share their condolences last weekend, and all those who remain constant and consistent in asking how we are.
Have I thanked those people for that? I’m working on those thank you notes, and, to answer your question, “I’m fine.”
So, here I am today. As I look to the east at the straight rows of corn, I am thanking my Dad for this farmhouse and his sledgehammer; his presence in my kids’ lives; his precision, his service to his country, his love for my mom and me and my brother, his arranged marriage he hoped for when he introduced me to Joe, his pride and joy of his grandkids and his act of selflessness in nearly everything he did.
I’m a believer in his everlasting life in Christ, so I know he knows, but I am also a believer in sadness because of the worldly world I love to live in.
So, I am going to sit out here in limited productivity (limited—I am on my porch with my laptop…it’s genetic) and think about how 20 years ago, I got the extraordinary opportunity to live my life on this farm alongside my dad.
Thanks, Dad. I got a lot done today. The yard’s mowed. The windows are clean. The cows are washed.
But mostly, I love you. I miss you. I’ll see you again.