My cousin Lynita, abandoned by her own father, asked my dad to walk her down the aisle on her wedding day, thirty five years ago. She brought the happy photo of bride and uncle walking up the aisle; we all cried. And the orphans, Janet and Nicki, attending the service recalled my dad’s help in the wake of their own father’s death as a navy pilot. And then there were the guys, more than a dozen of them over the last forty years that my dad summer employed to work harder than they had ever imagined! One by one they returned to pay their respect to my dad for the example he had been to them; of work, of love, of faith. Greg told me that my mom and dad’s close relationship taught him how to love his wife. Doug said that the virtues he most aspires to in his life, he first saw demonstrated in my dad. Phil related that no matter how many times he messed up, my dad did not get angry. Chris cried saying that Dad was the grandpa he never had.
Another cousin, David, related that he’d happened upon a breath taking scene of glistening ice on fir trees. As the sun melted the ice, it slid to the ground in symphonic melody. In relating this scene to my dad, “Uncle Bob told me that God was speaking to me.” These are but a simple smattering of the many stories that have come our way since Dad’s death. He would question why I was even sharing these. But I have learned a lesson. Sometimes we evaluate a life by the wrong measures. I think that a life well lived is one that does the very most for those in closest proximity: the grandmother next door, the divorced neighbor, the wayward boy who needs another role model. It begins in our homes and it is an example that our children will model. Augustine sheds some light in his definition of love. “What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.” I am grateful for my dad’s example of love.
