Family Squeeze (21 page)

And joy will come again
—warm and secure,
if only for the now,
laughing we endure
.

R
UTH
B
ELL
G
RAHAM

D
ear Dad,

We laid you to rest on a Wednesday under the wide Canadian sky. I was hoping for a stray rain cloud to disguise my tears, but I wasn’t alone in that department. Saying good-bye to one you’ve admired since you were knee-high to a tricycle isn’t easy. But one who read you bedtime stories? Taught you to ride a bike? And loved you enough to say so? It is positively heartbreaking. Teenagers don’t hang out in cemeteries much, but your grandkids refused to leave on Wednesday.

The night before you crossed the River Jordan, they crowded around your bed and sang the hymns you loved to hear. Twice you took my daughter’s hand and tried to raise it to your lips. When at last you succeeded in kissing it, she began to weep from sadness and joy and the delight of another memory she’ll carry for life.

And that’s what you were about, Dad. Memories.

When you thought no one was watching, I learned to laugh. I asked you once what you’d like us to say about you when you’re gone. You said
with a straight face, “I’d like you to say, ‘Look! He’s moving!’ “ But I know you wouldn’t trade the riches of eternity for this time-locked place.

When I was a lad, I loved to sneak up on you and watch what you were doing when you didn’t know I was there. I don’t know that a kid ever adored his dad more than I did.

I saw you smack your thumb with a hammer once, and I held my breath. You danced around using strong language like “Oh shoot!” Then you snickered.

If anyone had reason to cuss, it was you. Your mother died when you were two, leaving you roaming the streets of your hometown alone while your father toiled in a furniture factory. Raised by crazy uncles in a home where the unspeakable was commonplace, you graduated from the school of hard knocks before you entered first grade. But you never shouldered a backpack of grudges. Instead, you warmed our Canadian winters telling stories of a childhood I found enviable, one jammed with fistfights and loaded rifles. You told those stories with a twinkle, too. That twinkle was a way of life for you.

When you thought no one was watching, I learned how to treat a woman. I learned to honor her and open doors for her and when to tip my hat. I learned that we’re toast without the ladies, so put them first in line at potlucks. I learned to let them stroll on the inside of the sidewalk so when we’re hit by an oncoming truck, they’ll still be around to care for the kids.

When you thought no one was watching, I learned what was worth chasing. You avoided the deceptive staircase promising “success,” investing in memories instead.

You never owned a new car, but scrounged to buy tent trailers for family vacations.

You blew money on ice cream so we’d stay at the table longer.

You bought flowers for my mother and gifts for my children.

Watching your life, I learned that simplicity is the opposite of simple-mindedness, that those who win the rat race are still rats.

Going through your dresser last night, I found your glasses, heart pills, and a reading lamp. I suspect you’re doing fine without them.

You didn’t leave much behind. Believe me, we’ve looked.

In a folder marked “Will,” you’d misfiled a note Mom gave you listing your attributes. She made you sound like Father Teresa. “On time for work. A gentleman. Filled with integrity. Wholesome in speech. Loves family. Loves God.” I guess it was filed correctly. It’s the best inheritance a kid could hope for.

When you thought no one was watching, you showed me how to encourage others. I saw you hug teenagers who had more earrings than brain cells. You smiled and blessed them. Apart from Mom, you were my most boisterous fan, always wanting to applaud my latest book or hear where I was traveling to next. Sometimes now, when I achieve something you would have found significant, it’s like I sunk a hole-in-one while golfing by myself.

When you thought no one was watching, I learned how to bring God’s Word to life. Hours before you passed away, I had you to myself. You were struggling to breathe, and my singing didn’t help, so I told you I loved you and thanked you for being a good dad. Then I opened the same old King James Bible I watched you read when I was a boy. You’d underlined some glorious verses in Revelation 21, and though my voice cracked and quavered, I read them out loud. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” By the time I reached the promise that your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, you were sound asleep.

Friday morning the sun rose on your face, and you simply stopped breathing. No more tears. No more Alzheimer’s. Home free.

You’ll be glad to know your granddaughter Elena braided your comb-over like she’d done a hundred times before. We sat by your bedside, and your daughter, Ruth, said, “Do you suppose he’s saved?” And we laughed way too loud—from the deep assurance that you’re with Jesus.

Someone said, “I’m sorry you lost your dad,” and I said, “Thank you. But how can I say I’ve lost him when I know exactly where he is?”

When you thought no one was watching, I learned how to die. With relationships intact, with nothing left unsaid.

Four of your five children were there. When we went to tell Mom of your passing, Tim asked, “Do you know why we’re here?”

“Money?” said your wife of sixty-two years. You’d have been proud of her.

She held your hand then, clinging to the last of your warmth. For the longest time she didn’t say anything, just stared out the window. I asked what she was thinking, and she smiled. “I’d like to take one more stroll in the grass with him.” Wouldn’t we all? When they came to take you away, she simply said, “Thanks for all the years, sweetheart.”

I’d like to thank you too.

Thanks for hunting trips and fishing lessons. Thanks for majoring on the majors. And for a thousand timeless memories. Most of all, thanks for giving me a tiny glimpse of what God looks like.

Tonight I’ll lay flowers on your grave once again, and past the tears I’ll determine to keep that twinkle alive. To live so the preacher won’t have to lie at my funeral. As you cheer me on, all the way Home.

Our lives are shaped by those who love us
.

J
OHN
P
OWELL

I
n seventeen years of writing I have not received anything like the avalanche of mail that descended after I wrote short versions of the previous two chapters for my “Laughing Matters” column. Letters showed up from around the world. Several were from self-described agnostics and atheists—one a childhood friend of mine. Amid generous expletives, he expressed how much he loved being in our home when he was a boy. “Your parents [bad word] loved me when no one else [even badder word] did,” the edited version would read.

At least a dozen came from those who had a product guaranteed to fix my Mom. I shall paraphrase what those letters looked like:

One suggested a fascinating therapy. “I manufacture quilts with Bible verses embroidered on them. When spread across their laps, these quilts bring Alzheimer’s patients back to us. They are only two hundred dollars each.”

Several informed me that it was my fault: “If you just had more faith, she would be healed.”

One recommended, “If you can just get her to drink more water every day, she’ll be fine.”

But mostly, as I pored over these letters, I was struck by peoples kindness and compassion. Jeanette Windle, a best-selling novelist, wrote: “Your mother had such an influence on my own life as a writer. I remember vividly being an eighteen-year-old missionary kid lost in the strange, cold country of Canada and reading Bernice Callaway’s literature. It gave me hope that one day I would write books too. The rest, of course, is history.”

Another author, Maxine Hancock, wrote, “Having just come through the stage you are now in, I know how hard it is: My father lost his mobility, my mother lost her mind, and we came pretty close to losing our sense of humor over the past six years. But both parents have now made it to the Crossing Over point. The losses of old age may be even harder when the contrast between what is and what was is so sharp.”

A ninety-one-year-old saint by the name of Delma Jackson told how God had used the story. “I read it many times and it began to dawn on me that while I have eagerly looked forward to going to heaven knowing I am a child of God, I have been in complete denial about this possibility of a slow good-bye.’ Gradually I began to embrace the fact that if it should come, God would be big enough for even this. The result? A wonderful work of revival is going on in my life. I have been reading His Word and praying that He would help me shine my light in the years I have left.”

Vera Tyler of London wrote, “My husband, Bill, died in December
after ten years of suffering the increasing confusion and loneliness of Alzheimer’s. We watched him lose all memory of the years we spent serving with China Inland Mission, even though he could still speak Chinese. Much of life was forgotten, but he was still praising God and singing the old much-loved hymns. He remained a blessing by being his gracious, grateful self.”

Bertha Parker Thompson told me that her mother was the one who knelt with her when she was seven and helped guide her into the family of God. “She also read
Winnie-the-Pooh
. At eighty-six, she has no short-term memory and no logic. She lives on Pop-Tarts and milk, even though she’s a diabetic. But she still can sing all the hymns with all the verses. And she can still recite almost all of ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’! Still, we are truly blessed that of all the mothers we could have had, God loaned us to her.”

And Sharon McLver-DeBruyn, one of the gals who now refers to my mother as Mom, wrote, “I remember the time I asked my own sweet little mother what she thought about a problem and she replied, ‘I don’t know. You decide. You are the mother.’ It was such a privilege to be my mother’s mother as she faded away into that land where she will never grow old. Thank you for this lovely, sensitive reminder that family is so important and God’s grace is immeasurable.”

The novelist Margaret Lee Runbeck said, “A man leaves all kinds of footprints when he walks through life. Some you can see, like his children and his house. Others are invisible, like the prints he leaves across other people’s lives: the help he gives them and what he has said—his jokes, gossip that has hurt others, encouragement. A man doesn’t think about it, but everywhere he passes, he leaves some kind of mark.”

I once heard someone ask Mom which of her books she was most proud of. I leaned closer at the question, because she had written half a dozen, and I couldn’t wait to hear the answer.

“I have five books I’m still working on, and I’m most proud of them,” she grinned.

“Oh? And what are the titles?”

“Dave, Dan, Tim, Ruth, and little Philip,” she replied. “I hope I’m writing my best material into their lives.”

Though I have been privileged to share platforms with some of the greatest orators on Earth, it was my father’s words lived out before me that shaped my life far more than any preacher. Though my bookshelves are filled with several thousand volumes of the finest books on faith, it is the life of my mother, a simple farm girl from Ontario, Canada, that has shown me what it means to walk with Christ, how to lean on Him for strength, how to share His joy with others, all the way Home. I thank God for two very human parents who wrote their stories across my life, who taught me early what really mattered. May God give us all strength and wisdom to walk in their steps.