Remembering Dad

When I was growing up, one of my father’s favorite phrases when he was mad was “that dirty bird.” He would more or less spit that phrase out at random times of something breaking, or hitting his hand or us doing something we we not supposed to which resulted in the breaking of something.

We tried not to break things, we really did, but you see, so many things were jerry-rigged together that breakage was honestly inevitable. I guess that is why everything was all so interesting at my house. To me it was a nightmare of unfinished projects and clutter on a epic scale, to my friends it was a treasure trove of fascinating things that they had never seen before. Seriously, some of the things in our yard were unlike anything anyone had in their yards. Our yard was not, what we call, well groomed, so it often had a wide range of items scattered about in various stage of construction or decay, depending on what the item was.

My father was a collector. We had a saw mill in our yard for quite a number of years, then there was the massive 4-sided planer made of solid steel and was the size of a travel trailer… which we also had … and which we enjoyed sleeping in during the summer. You honestly never knew what Dad was going to come home with. One day it was an elevator, and because our house was not very large and a staircase took up a lot of room an elevator was the logical choice. So in it went – a big electric motor in the basement and cables and pulleys and this slick track up the wall with the up, down and stop buttons attached to the cage. It was magical. Even the dog liked it.

We had lots of trees, which meant rope swings and great places to climb. Near the shop there was a junk yard – complete with an old 50s Chevy DeLuxe and many piles of “stuff” that I can’t even begin to remember. What I do remember is that at one point I made a pulpit out of pieces and part and would preach to my brother and sister. I guess you could say church was rather deeply ingrained into me.

So it was an interesting way to grow up – never dull, always things happening and always things breaking. When everything is always on the edge of breaking, it was no small miracle for Dad to keep all those plates spinning, and being the oldest, I was often called up to assist in the fixing process. Sometimes that meant laying on the damp cold driveway (we did not have a functional garage big enough for the larger vehicles) doing transmission work on the dump truck, or hammering out king pins in the 50s Chevy truck, or brazing soup cans to fix muffler holes, or using the backhoe to straighten the frame of a truck… Oh yeah, my Dad was “the king of figure out a way” to make it work. He was wildly inventive and very determined, because it is absolutely true that necessity is the mother of invention. He exemplified that.

So today, being Father’s Day and all, I was thinking of the reality that I can’t talk to him today like I always do on this day. And that was hard when I was sitting there in church this morning. A part of me just feels like it was all too soon… and that’s something that so many share when they think of someone they lost suddenly. We grieve for the loss of the memories that were yet to be made, the conversations that were still to happen, the days yet to come… but now, in the absence of Dad, I remember the legacy left behind.

It wasn’t about collections of stuff or whatever it is that is left, but the time spent and the words spoken. One thing that stuck out to me as I was pondering today, was how my father was a father to so many other than Matt, Sara and I. So many kids that were on his bus route or that he ran into during his lifetime were like children to him. I saw him buy medicine for those who couldn’t afford it, even when he couldn’t. I saw him encourage and speak life and truth to so many kids, visit them in jail, help out in times of need – again and again I saw him give, give and give some more. He had the heart of a father, and looking back, I can say that was a legacy that I have tried to emulate in my life. Though I don’t have children of my own, my heart has always been to father those who either don’t have a father, or kids who have parents that just need someone to help out and be a big brother / mentor. It is an honor and a privilege and I think that because I watched my Dad do it for so many, it is something I learned from him.

I honor my father today for the man he was and how he was instrumental in showing me through his stories, through our discussions, through his discipline, through work, and through his love in action how to be a man. I love you Dad and today I’m missing you a whole bunch. But I know you are up there conversating about all the busticated, rusticated problems of this old world and how messed up we are in our brain housing groups…and how much Jesus loves us. Somehow that makes me smile.