Missing Dad

It's been such a whirlwind of life events and I have been so focused on getting back to the regularly scheduled program that I have barely had time to think about Dad being gone. Every once in awhile, the thought creeps into my consciousness, but I push it away. I don't want to think about Dad being gone. Not yet. Let me hold on to my illusion that things are as they have been for some time. Dad is at his office and I live in another city. We will get together when our schedules lighten up.

But I know it is not true. I call home and Mom answers the phone now. A few times I had the fleeting idea of running something past Dad to see what he had to say about a certain topic or a theological conundrum I am chewing on. Usually that entailed a long and thought provoking conversation, but there will be no more running things past Dad to see what he thinks.

I am only just beginning to miss him. Mom is working on collecting his sermons and making them available to us. I look forward to reading them or listening to them, to recapturing some small essence of the man who bought me sneakers at the Salvation Army, who started a used clothing store before they were popular, who stretched a dollar until it begged for mercy.

Will I hear him in the words he spoke from the pulpit? Will I hear his penchant for harvesting food from the wild - everything from strawberries and elderberries to pods of peas that fell from the processing trucks at the Green Giant plants? Will I recall how he muttered to himself when he was working on some construction project, talking himself through to a solution when bolts were stubborn and slots didn't quite fit?

Will his words bear testimony to the preacher who built his own A frame and taught his children to butter bricks and raise rafters and work a come along? Will there be some hint of the man who built a camper trailer from scraps and hauled his family cross country on a great adventure to visit his Dad in California and incidentally stopped at all the national parks, imbuing us with a love of nature and a memory for America that still colors our horizons?

How will I connect with all those pieces of life that somehow fit into my childhood and formed me into a definable and strong character? How can I hold on to him when he is no longer here? Mom asked me if there was anything of Dad's I wanted to remember him by. I thought about it for awhile, and said I would like one of his Bibles - preferably one he wrote notes in. Mom too cherishes that part of Dad and will keep the most marked one and will it to me when she is done with it. Meantime, she sent me others.

I page through them gently now and again when I have the strength left over from daily demands to think about Dad. I can almost smell his flannel shirt and hear the classical music he liked. He, like me, once worked as a recording engineer at college. I had no idea until after I had done that that he had ever taken on the same activity or that he enjoyed it so much. What an eclectic person he was! Surprising that he could roll up his sleeves and work in the dirty grimy shops while still excelling at a hearty theological debate.

Long after he retired (which he never really completely did) I asked him jokingly what project he was working on, thinking that since he was retired, he was just interested in vegging. So he described how he was designing an invariable bicycle gear so that the rider need never shift but the bike would automatically adjust to the terrain. Take that on after you retire! Goodness.

He was a quiet man who never spoke his preferences. He'd eat dirt had it been served him and never complain. Yet he constantly thought "outside the box" long before that was popular. We hugged only once that I can ever remember, and that was when we buried my son. Perhaps because those hugs were so rare I treasure the memory of it, of its unexpectedness, of its depth and solidness.

I cried a lot before he died. How it hurt to see him suffer so. I cried a bit at the funeral in the car waiting to drive to the cemetery. But today finally I allow myself to miss him, and the tears are coursing down my cheeks. Dear Dad. Sometimes your ways felt like sandpaper against the wood of my life. How I loved to be part of your projects and activities, exploring the woods for ground pine or sledding downhill with the kids from church (I treasure that picture of you at 80 sledding down a little hill near your house).

You were one of a kind, a gem half hidden by life's muddiness, solid, dependable, sure. You were right when you told me there are many ways that people show their love. I am just beginning to learn.