- Image by nimboo via Flickr
Five days, thirteen hours, and six minutes.
That’s how long it’s been (at the start of this writing, anyway) since my Dad passed from this place to a better one. Our faith in God gives us assurance that this is so. Our faith in God also assures us that he won’t put more on us than we can handle. I’m becoming aware that He gave us the capacity to handle a lot.
In the terrible 36 hours before he passed away, our rising awareness of the inevitable caused spasms of grief and sorrow. Our family discussions in the sunny hallway near the ICU (the waiting room was too dark and too, well, institutional – and full of folks who expressed their grief in vocal and animated fashion) were memories of the funny things he said in the last days when he was still conscious and lucid, somber recitations of those already-known but not yet vocalized rites of death, punctuated with brief collapses into the utter sadness of knowing we’d never see him again here.
Busyness keeps away the grief
Garden, from the northwest corner
In the days immediately following his death, we were busy taking care of things. I think all those activities kept us from dwelling too long on the reality of Dad being gone; it kept the grief from creeping up and overtaking us. Mom had to communicate with the funeral home about transportation and cremation. I know details of that process now, that for some reason I didn’t think I’d ever hear. Apparently, you have a choice as to the construction and quality of the vessel in which the cremation actually occurs. Mom, being the frugal person she is, opted for the least expensive one. It seems an odd thing to remember, but it was one of the decisions that had to be made.
Mom and Dad have had a garden at every place they’ve owned, since we moved out to Thaxton, Virginia, in the ’60s. The one at Pine Forest is pretty large: about 40′ x 100′, with tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, beans, peas, potatoes, bell and cayenne peppers, beets, and even a watermelon vine. Mom cans all kinds of things every year, and makes several excellent varieties of relishes and pickles. For 35 years, there’s always been a garden. I had lost track of the amount of work that’s required. Sure, I engaged in conversation with Dad every year about one aspect or another of the garden, and remembered tiny bits of the immense number of facts he had collected over the years about every nuance: seeds, plants, planting, cultivating, and harvesting. I realize now that I didn’t retain much of it, and consequently know almost nothing about keeping a garden.
Dad was in the hospital for almost two weeks, and Mom was with him continuously,
Freshly weeded and tilled
except for a few brief periods. Two weeks of inattention result in the need for a lot of work to get things back to normal. The weeds were starting to get the better of the place, and the extremely hot and dry weather had been withering some of the plants. We found some extra soaker hose to hook up to the irrigation system that Dad devised (water is pumped about 100 yards and up 30 feet of elevation, from the pond to a pressure tank, and then into a series of hoses that drip tiny amounts continuously), so the row of peppers, beets, and potatoes could get some constant water for a while. Squash, tomatoes, and beans were already on water lines, so they were fine, but the weeds had been getting water too. It took a couple of several-hour periods of hoeing, tilling, and raking to get things back in order. It looks pretty much up to Dad’s standard now.
Memorial services don’t just appear out of nowhere
On Monday, we met with the pastor of the Ward’s Chapel Methodist Church to plan the memorial service. He’s a nice fellow. They rotate their pastors every couple of years, so he hasn’t known Dad for very long. In such an instance, the pastor wants to get together with the family and glean some information about the deceased, so he can talk about him during the service. We could see where a session of information gathering could be long and arduous, especially when you’re in the middle of the mental fog that follows the death of a loved one. There were a handful of things we knew were favorites of Dad’s – like his favorite scripture verse, and his favorite hymn – that could be summoned up pretty quickly. But things of substance, like details about his character, and background – they’d be harder – not because we didn’t know them, but because everything’s clouded with that creeping grief.
Luckily, we had the perfect resource: my youngest sister Shannon and her husband had given Dad a book in 1997 called “A Father’s Legacy.” It was a book full of questions, the answers to which would paint a pretty complete picture of who he was, his life’s work, and memories of his life before, and with us. Shannon didn’t know how he’d react to getting such a book. Thankfully, he embraced it – and filled it with material that we will treasure. It’s full of great stuff: stories about his childhood, friends, romances, schools, work, and the things that influenced him throughout life (with my Mom’s and siblings’ permission, I will share some of it in the weeks ahead). The five of us sat down with copies of it, and identified passages that we’d like to have read during the service. The pastor did a great job with that.
Yeah, and we fished
John and I hooked these at almost the same time
There’s a great little pond on Mom and Dad’s property. It’s just a couple of acres, but it’s perfect. My grandfather built it to irrigate his tobacco crop in the years after World War II. I can remember fishing in when I was a child, and we used to gather on the east side of the pond for our Independence Day celebrations. One of my favorite pictures of my Dad was taken there. In the years after my grandfather stopped farming, and my Mom and Dad built their place out there, the pond had fallen into disrepair. Dad did some cleanup, built a small pier, and stocked it about three years ago with 200 largemouth bass fingerlings. They’re about four to five pounds now, and it’s great to catch fish of that size with some regularity.
So, every time we go up there, we try to throw a line in the water. This week was no different; I think Dad would have been pleased to see the enjoyment we got from his efforts. Even the day of the memorial service, once we got back to the house and changed our clothes, almost all of us headed
Thomas hooked a nice one
Max's big catch
down to the pond to try our luck. We caught a bunch of nice fish this week: John and I hooked two good ones within minutes of one another. Lindsey’s boyfriend Thomas hooked a nice one, and Max -the youngest grandchild- caught one that looked like it was half his height. It was perfect.
There are mountains to climb
Like I said before, I think the busyness of the week kept the grief from sneaking up and enveloping us. Now, we have to return to some semblance of routine. Mom will be up at Pine Forest alone, without Dad. There are relatives and friends there on the farm, and close by, but she’s still there in that big house by herself. I heard her say to folks at the memorial service that the reality of being alone would come in a couple of weeks, when all the hustle and bustle of this week was gone. I think she’s right. As the weeks and months go by, we’ll encounter all those events where he used to be: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and weekend visits, and that’s when we’ll miss him. It’s part of the process, and I’m not looking forward to it.
The outpouring of condolences, well-wishes, and prayers from our friends has been amazing. We are grateful for every expression of support that has been offered. We are moving forward to the future without our brother, husband, father, grandfather, and friend. We have each other; that, and our memories will have to be enough.
