For My Father

This is being published in the Sunday edition of our local paper, where I've worked for nearly 25 years, and is my tribute to my Dad, who passed away on July 21, 2011.

“The summer’s gone, and all the flowers are dying; ‘Tis you, ‘tis you must go and I must bide,” sang the tenor who the year before was with the San Diego Opera and this day was singing “Danny Boy” at a home for people with dementia. This time, he too was a “resident,” called upon to entertain at a Father’s Day celebration last year, reaching notes effortlessly in a melodic, soothing timbre that needed no microphone.

Dad and I were at a table in the home’s courtyard, enjoying hot dogs and burgers with a decorated Marine colonel who had served in the Pacific Theater in World War II, and his wife. As we ate and talked, the wife prompted her husband to remember some of his war exploits, but time and disease had done their damage, and his voice faltered and stopped in its retelling. He had forgotten, for now.

The hustle and bustle of the day seemed to have worn on Dad, too, and as he went to his room he asked if I would be waiting when he came out. Then he forgot I was there. Visits to Dad often were followed by walks on the beach, letting the sounds of waves wash away the melancholy.

It’s the nature of advancing dementia to alter reality, blur memories, strip victims and their families of normalcy. But there are also moments, minutes, hours of clarity. A couple more visits later, we saw that clarity in what would be our last conversation before he left us within the next two weeks. It was a “gift,” an Alzheimer’s Association official told me, and one my husband and I treasure, especially today, the first Father’s Day my four brothers, two sisters and I will mark without Dad.

It’s the first time I won’t be standing in front of a wall of cards looking for just the right one, or shopping for a shirt for my impeccably groomed father. My teens, 20s, 30s had me sifting through ties. He liked the ties I picked out. Or so he said. Later it would have been a gift card to a home improvement store. Dad had taken up carpentry as retirement approached, and many finely crafted cutting boards, knife holders and benches were gifted at Christmastime, or just because.

Dad’s story is like many others of his generation. Born in Texas to farmers, his family moved to Oklahoma and then, when the Dust Bowl stripped away soil and dreams, came to California. They built a life, and later a welding business, in Imperial. Dad apprenticed for a butcher in his teens and excelled on the ball fields, if not the classrooms, of Imperial High.

World War II was in its waning years and, before Dad could graduate, Uncle Sam drafted him. He returned from training in San Diego to receive his diploma, but instead of cap and gown wore his Navy blues. The war would end as his ship reached Hawaii, where he spent the next year or so finishing his service.

He had become a committed follower of Jesus Christ during those years, and after the Navy went to the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, now Biola University, where he met Mom, daughter of Scottish immigrants.

Many years later, Dad would become a pastor, moving his family first to Oregon, then to Washington, returning with Mom to be pastor of Imperial Community for 22 years.

Today likely will not be tear-free for me, sitting in a pew of the church we attend, listening to our pastor at the same pulpit Dad stood behind those many years. But it will be filled with memories of a Dad who loved his children passionately, who encouraged us in the things at which we naturally excelled and in the ways we didn’t.

He would be the first to admit he wasn’t perfect, a sinner needing a Savior, a man who made his share of mistakes, but he was more than humble enough to admit it. That, for me, is the best example he could have set.