May 20, 1985

Today is 25 years since my dad died, at my age--43. We knew about his kidney cancer for about 10 months or so before we lost him to it. I was 18 and had just finished my freshman year at the University of Texas at the time. I have never written or talked about that time, because I've never really had a lot to say. (I still don't, but bear with me--ha!)

I think it's strange that my memories of his last days and his funeral are so blurry. I can't remember if I saw him just before he died, or a few days before, or a week before. I'm pretty sure I saw him still in the hospital, after he died, with a red rose in his hands, clasped across his chest. To tell you the truth, I can't remember feeling anything other than "so this is how it ended up." I must have been numb.

I was numb for the funeral, too--people tell me that seeing my brother and I stoically walking hand-in-hand down the aisle was almost creepy, because of our apparent lack of emotion. But at the time, I was just doing what I thought was the "proper" behavior at one's dad's funeral (I was, and am, quite into being proper--I can't help it!). Sobbing in front of everyone just wasn't my way of dealing with the situation, and Keith followed along, as was his way. I didn't cry at all about it for a long time; I don't know why.

I believe that our life events and circumstances provide the forge that God uses to mold, shape, and carve us into the beings He has planned for us to be. He does bring great good from great sadness, after all. Sometimes it's easy to drive yourself crazy trying to analyze His divine plans. It's taking me a lifetime to stop analyzing, and just live! But my dad's death was certainly a pivotal point in both my brother's and my faith journeys, if you go in for such concepts as "faith journeys." After that year, Keith and I both developed into extremely fervent Christians.

I can't speak for Keith, but to me, when confronted with something so profound as the early loss of my father, I was struck once and for all with the totality of my powerlessness. We are not in control, after all. Until then, I'd been pretty much focused on carving out my own contribution to the world, working hard to build my resume and climb the ladder of earthly achievement. In other words, I was a totally selfish teenager, as my dad would have been first in line to tell you. But when he died, all of that began to seem like a waste of time. My world view changed in favor of things that are more deeply relevant--relationships, not my resume. And since then I've never once believed that I could control my own life. If God was so obviously in charge of when and how our lives end, I figured, how could we really do anything at all without Him?

I've seen this go the other way, you know. My mom and my grandmother both had a spiritual response to my dad's death that was the polar opposite of mine and Keith's. They became angry with God, and my mom, at least, has never been able to trust Him since. To tell you the truth, it is one of the greatest sadnesses of my life that now, with her disability, she can't understand things about God in any way but a very childlike one. Of course, that's exactly how He wants us to know Him, though, isn't it?

Twenty-five years after the fact, when I try to remember clear details about my father's wake/viewing and funeral, they just don't come. I have flashes--riding in the limosine past the chemical plant where he worked for his whole life, that hand-holding walk with my brother, what I was wearing (of course), reaching out the limo window for a hug from my childhood neighbor, whom I hadn't seen in years--but I'd expect to remember much more than I do. Other memories, of things much less important from the same time period, are much crisper, and I can't imagine why that would be. Perhaps the fact that there have been several other very similar family funerals at the exact same funeral home, with burials just a few yards from my father's, with many of the very same people attending, has blurred those 1985 memories. I am scared, humbled, and saddened by the fact that one or two more of those family funerals are looming in the not-too-distant-at-all future.

Not to be over-the-top dramatic or trite about it, but I really think that my dad's death was when I started--just started, of course--to grow out of my selfish, spoiled teenage self. And perhaps that is a very small part of the good that God brought out of that young death. In a tiny way, maybe, my dad died for me, in that way. Perhaps he (God? My dad?) knew there was no other way to snap me out of it! And now, after twenty-five years, I see my dad every day, of course, in the five precious little faces and souls that take after him in so many ways. I know that he sees them too, and he is so proud.