For the month of November, I’m going to continue with my habit of posting things I am thankful for. Thankfulness is different from happiness, and I don’t want to conflate the two.
Today was Papa’s birthday. He would have been 111 today. He’s been gone for 13 years now, and I still miss him. I’m so thankful he was my father.
Today was Papa’s birthday. He would have been 110 today. He’s been gone for 12 years now, and I still miss him. I’m so thankful he was my father.
Today was Papa’s birthday. He would have been 109 today. He’s been gone for 11 years now, and I still miss him. I’m so thankful he was my father.
Today was Papa’s birthday. He would have been 104 today. He’s been gone for 7 years now, and I still miss him. I’m so thankful he was my father.
This is a re-post from last year’s Father’s Day post. I’ve posted this several times, but I can’t do any better on Father’s Day.
(This is the eulogy I gave at my father’s funeral. He died in May 2008 at the ripe old age of 96.)
Papa’s obituary was correct and factual and in that way it matched him. He was an engineer, and he was nothing if not correct and factual.
For those of you who are touchy-feely personalities, you probably thought it was terribly dry, and you don’t really have a feeling for the man whose life I honor today.
But correct and factual actually embodies him better than many of the other things I can say about him. That’s not to say he was uncaring, or cold – unless you think the rock your life is built on is uncaring or cold.
To me, he was strong, solid, dependable, deep, supporting, and faithful – qualities I’d opt for any time over sweet, sentimental, emotional, sensitive and demonstrative.
I remember in the movie “Love Story”, the main character was estranged from his father, and said “My father never wrote letters to me, he sent Memos”. When we heard that my sisters and I looked at each other and said, “So???” Papa used to always send us memos in school.
To: Abbie
From: Papa
Re: Funds
Do you need any? How are your grades?
Love, Papa
When Ray was just 2 months old, I became gravely ill. Al and I were still in college – Al was about to graduate – we had NO money – we didn’t know what to do. So Al put Ray and me on an airplane and shipped us back home. I ended up in the hospital for three weeks, Mama was working at a new job, so during that time, Papa took vacation from work and stayed home to take care of the new baby.
I don’t know many grandfathers who thought their “baby days” were over, who would have done the same, but there was never any question about it with Papa. He just did what needed to be done.
Papa loved to fish and, although he was a loyal churchman, we occasionally could convince him to take us fishing on Sunday mornings – particularly if he had caught a line full on Saturday. In Arkansas during the summer the only time the fish will bite is early in the morning – right during church.
I remember my sister and I convinced him to take us on a float on Little River one Sunday morning from Cerra Gordo, Oklahoma to Little River Country Club. Someone would drive us up-river where we would put in about dawn, and then we would float back down to the club. As I said, this was a Sunday morning, and Papa’s conscience must have gotten the better of him, because we did the middle three miles singing “Love Lifted Me”, “Shall We Gather at the River” and all the other good old revival songs at the top of our lungs. We sang the verses and Papa provided the oompa-pas.
As an engineer, he always loved to stick his head under the hood of any car around.
That’s Papa with two son-in-laws, two grandsons, and his only son.
Mama was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1993. Papa took over running the house as Mama became less and less able to keep up with things. But he didn’t do it like a woman would, he did it like an Engineer with schedules, and flow charts, and checklists. And he never complained. He didn’t take up cooking, he took up shopping for microwavable dinners.
He let Mama keep doing the wash – because it was one of the things she could still manage, until the day she emptied the trash into the clothes washer and started it running. Papa was taking a nap in his recliner in front of a baseball game when he heard a terrible rattling and clanging coming from the laundry room. Empty bottles and cans were agitating in the washer! But he didn’t fuss. He just cleaned out the machine, and put a lock on the sliding door. He continued to care for her at home until the sibs and I finally convinced him that it wasn’t doing either one of them any good.
He was a great tease and kidder. It is one of the things that never left him, even at the end of his life. Clara, one of nurses in the health care unit, said a few days before he died, he was semi-conscious, and she had just finished taking his blood pressure. She leaned over him to straighten the linens on the other side of the bed and suddenly he popped his eyes open and said “Boo!” Then he just grinned.
While we lived in New Jersey, Mama and Papa became friends with one of the preachers at the church and his wife. Orville and Margaret Austin remained friends for 30 years, even though they moved away in 1963. They really enjoyed playing bridge – men against the women – because the women claimed the men didn’t really know what they were doing.
I think about 7 o’clock last Monday evening, Orville and Margaret and Mama were gathered in heaven to meet him with the cards already dealt. “Sit down. What took you so long? We’ve been waiting for you for 10 years.”
He was my foundation, my rock, my underpinning, my support! He was my father, and, although we had him many years longer than the biblical three-score years and ten, it was still too short a time. Someone once said, “You are old when there’s nobody left to whom you are a little girl.” I miss him.
This is a re-post from last year’s Father’s Day post. I’ve posted this several times, but I can’t do any better on Father’s Day.
(This is the eulogy I gave at my father’s funeral. He died in May 2008 at the ripe old age of 96.)
Papa’s obituary was correct and factual and in that way it matched him. He was an engineer, and he was nothing if not correct and factual.
For those of you who are touchy-feely personalities, you probably thought it was terribly dry, and you don’t really have a feeling for the man whose life I honor today.
But correct and factual actually embodies him better than many of the other things I can say about him. That’s not to say he was uncaring, or cold – unless you think the rock your life is built on is uncaring or cold.
To me, he was strong, solid, dependable, deep, supporting, and faithful – qualities I’d opt for any time over sweet, sentimental, emotional, sensitive and demonstrative.
I remember in the movie “Love Story”, the main character was estranged from his father, and said “My father never wrote letters to me, he sent Memos”. When we heard that my sisters and I looked at each other and said, “So???” Papa used to always send us memos in school.
To: Abbie
From: Papa
Re: Funds
Do you need any? How are your grades?
Love, Papa
When Ray was just 2 months old, I became gravely ill. Al and I were still in college – Al was about to graduate – we had NO money – we didn’t know what to do. So Al put Ray and me on an airplane and shipped us back home. I ended up in the hospital for three weeks, Mama was working at a new job, so during that time, Papa took vacation from work and stayed home to take care of the new baby.
I don’t know many grandfathers who thought their “baby days” were over, who would have done the same, but there was never any question about it with Papa. He just did what needed to be done.
Papa loved to fish and, although he was a loyal churchman, we occasionally could convince him to take us fishing on Sunday mornings – particularly if he had caught a line full on Saturday. In Arkansas during the summer the only time the fish will bite is early in the morning – right during church.
I remember my sister and I convinced him to take us on a float on Little River one Sunday morning from Cerra Gordo, Oklahoma to Little River Country Club. Someone would drive us up-river where we would put in about dawn, and then we would float back down to the club. As I said, this was a Sunday morning, and Papa’s conscience must have gotten the better of him, because we did the middle three miles singing “Love Lifted Me”, “Shall We Gather at the River” and all the other good old revival songs at the top of our lungs. We sang the verses and Papa provided the oompa-pas.
As an engineer, he always loved to stick his head under the hood of any car around.
That’s Papa with two son-in-laws, two grandsons, and his only son.
Mama was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1993. Papa took over running the house as Mama became less and less able to keep up with things. But he didn’t do it like a woman would, he did it like an Engineer with schedules, and flow charts, and checklists. And he never complained. He didn’t take up cooking, he took up shopping for microwavable dinners.
He let Mama keep doing the wash – because it was one of the things she could still manage, until the day she emptied the trash into the clothes washer and started it running. Papa was taking a nap in his recliner in front of a baseball game when he heard a terrible rattling and clanging coming from the laundry room. Empty bottles and cans were agitating in the washer! But he didn’t fuss. He just cleaned out the machine, and put a lock on the sliding door. He continued to care for her at home until the sibs and I finally convinced him that it wasn’t doing either one of them any good.
He was a great tease and kidder. It is one of the things that never left him, even at the end of his life. Clara, one of nurses in the health care unit, said a few days before he died, he was semi-conscious, and she had just finished taking his blood pressure. She leaned over him to straighten the linens on the other side of the bed and suddenly he popped his eyes open and said “Boo!” Then he just grinned.
While we lived in New Jersey, Mama and Papa became friends with one of the preachers at the church and his wife. Orville and Margaret Austin remained friends for 30 years, even though they moved away in 1963. They really enjoyed playing bridge – men against the women – because the women claimed the men didn’t really know what they were doing.
I think about 7 o’clock last Monday evening, Orville and Margaret and Mama were gathered in heaven to meet him with the cards already dealt. “Sit down. What took you so long? We’ve been waiting for you for 10 years.”
He was my foundation, my rock, my underpinning, my support! He was my father, and, although we had him many years longer than the biblical three-score years and ten, it was still too short a time. Someone once said, “You are old when there’s nobody left to whom you are a little girl.” I miss him.
What were your parents like when they got older? – Mama was only 77 when she died of Alzheimer’s and, mentally, she had already been gone for 5 or 6 years, so it’s hard for me to talk about what she was like when she was “older”. She lost a lot of weight when she was in her mid-60’s, and became much more active. She used to walk with me every morning for about an hour, and we were able to just “visit” about her history, her family when she was a child, her friends and schooling. I really enjoyed getting to know her as an adult and a friend, instead of just as Mama.
Papa was the same as he had always been. He loved to fish and did that a lot after he retired. He also loved to putter around the garage and “fix” things. After Mama died, he moved to a retirement community and settled in well. He was a great conversationalist and loved to tell jokes and stories. He also got “Web-TV” and spent lots of time cruising the internet (age 85+). He gradually became more and more fixated on his aches and pains, and loved to go to the doctor for any new medicine or treatment that might be available. He was physically pretty active, up until a couple of years before his death at age 96, and was only confined to the health care unit for the last six months or so of his life.
Did you have any expectations at points in your life about what growing older would be like for you? – I always thought I would be able to get busy and lose the excess weight when I got into my 60’s, but so far no luck (although I’m only 67, so I still have a little time). I’m resigned to the fact that, with my family history of both my grandmother and mother suffering from Alzheimer’s, I may develop it, too.
Because of that, I try to keep as mentally active as I can, and also I’m trying to experience as many pleasureful things as I can through these years when I still have my wits about me. I’m writing this blog, for one thing; I have a whole Social Media community on Facebook and Twitter that I love and keep in contact with; I read a lot; I participate in Bible study; I’ve begun to learn to practice centering prayer; and I’m trying Praying in Color as a spiritual discipline.
I would like to get moved to Tacoma to Franke Tobey Jones sooner rather than later. My life is too short to continue to languish in the heat of Texas summers, particularly with the political climate here that is anathema to me.
How should a person prepare for old age? Is there anything you wish you’d done differently? – You should enjoy what you have while you still have the mental and physical ability to do it. I wish I had not let my exercise slip around the time Papa died.
I got so caught up in taking care of him, I quit walking every morning, and then I just didn’t get back to it. I know if I could just force myself to get started again, I would feel better, and would be better able to lose this excess weight.
An Aging Liberal Hippy from the Left Coast 