If I had Written My Dad’s Obituary

When a loved one dies, there is no time to think.  Even if we were capable of thinking during those hours and days immediately after losing someone we love deeply, the words to build a proper salute quite often just don’t come.  We are rushed to the funeral home to make arrangements.  They ask questions with which to build an obituary to print in the local paper. We answer them with a kind of dazed stare into space because we can’t even believe we’re there – expected to come up with the eloquent words needed to properly announce the passing of someone so incredibly dear to us.  

There are two possibilities about my father’s obituary, which is intensely brief and terse.  It was either cobbled together from tiny scraps of information from those who participated in the interview while they were dazed and confused, arguably without the ability to think clearly.  Or possibly, it was written long before my precious father died. When he was still lucid enough to participate.  Before the Parkinson’s had taken over so much of him that he couldn’t think clearly.  If so, I imagine it’s exactly what he wanted; that he didn’t want it to be long and drawn out. He didn’t see himself as someone who was extraordinary or worth spending the money on to publish more than a few scant lines in the paper. 

Never “Father”.  Always “Dad”.  He shunned the spotlight, always content to sit back and watch those he loved fulfill their life’s dreams. Cheering us on from the sidelines, smiling and joking with the love only a parent can feel.  I imagine him saying, “don’t waste your money – there are other things more important to spend your money on.”  Frugal to the end.  That’s Dad.  “Turn those lights off – you don’t own stock in CEI!”  “Did you shut the back door?  We’re not air conditioning the entire neighborhood!”.  He had a million things he’d say, dad-isms if you will, which will stay with me forever.  “Hi Princess!” was of course, my favorite.  The sparkle in his eyes when any of his children or grandchildren walked into the room was enough to power CEI for a month.  So yes Dad, I guess I did own stock in CEI. 

In this country these days, funerals have been converted into “celebrations of life”.  They’ve been whitewashed and pared down to almost nothing, turning the dead into a mere memory even before they’re in the ground.  No eulogies.  No remembrances.  No grave site.  We’re not allowed to talk about what we’ll miss about them.  We’re not allowed to play the music they love at the reception following the service.  Instead we are to go staunchly on as if the dead had never pierced our souls forever and left us hollow.  We’re not allowed to talk about how they affected us; how the awful disease he lived with over these last years had been so much more than a burden for him.  We don’t stop to think about what that disease is teaching everyone involved.  How it’s building people’s compassion, empathy, coping mechanisms.  How the home health aide who came in daily to get him out of bed sees the dedication of a wife hell-bent on caring for her husband at home to the very end.  How the nurses in the hospital have learned to see old people as more than just blobs who need their sheets changed too often.  That they’re loved, and capable of loving even at the end.

God teaches us lessons through the struggles of others.  I have learned patience, tolerance, empathy and compassion through my father’s battle.  I have learned to be a better daughter, a better sister, a better parent, a better friend.  I have learned to listen to my boys and really see who they are, loving them even more because I do see.  To understand their souls and be able to back them up no matter where life takes them.  I hope that I can pass those gifts down to them as Dad has passed them down to me.

Dad didn’t want a fancy funeral. He didn’t want his body to be paraded in front of a room full of people and gawked at like a side-show.  I can appreciate and respect that.  But funerals are for the living, not the dead.  If Dad were part of the planning, again, he would’ve said don’t bother; it’s not worth it.  

Oh, but Dad, you are so worth it. 

Your influence over me, especially during these last years as I watched you deteriorate, has been more profound than you can imagine.  Your quiet leadership and loving hand have penetrated me to my soul and I truly believe you were meant to go through that horribleness for God’s plan to teach me and my brothers what it is to love unconditionally – to be so selfless and concerned with family that you’d sacrifice your dignity to teach a lesson.  I thank you, Dad, for everything you’ve taught me.  How to look at problems from another person’s point of view. How to sit back and listen, really listen, to what someone else is saying and to be fully engaged in the conversation so that the focus is purely on the other.  Never sidetracking to your own issues, your own pain, your own concerns or stories. But allowing the conversation to go where the other person needs it to go. Offering solutions or advice only after the tale is told and the look of anticipation on your daughter’s face signals you to bring up options and offer loving advice.  

You never had just one solution though.  Options.  Always options.  Simple requests for directions always yielded at least 4 possible routes to take.  “You could go up Euclid Ave, or take Lakeshore, or possibly circle around Dead Man’s Curve and get off at 9^th street.” “The shortest route has more lights, so will take longer.”  “Take the freeway, it’s quicker.” 

So many times, I just shook my head and told him “just give me one!”

Now I see that life is not that simple. Life isn’t just one route.  There are so many ways to get to the end of our lives. Taking the time to explore alternate routes is the secret.  Who wants a boring ride down the freeway when you can take a tree-lined drive through the country-side?  As my dad’s physical strengths faded, he and I would take drives out to the orchard to buy apples.  The promise of a few jars of apple butter from me, or an apple pie, always had him picking out a large bag of seconds – cheaper of course!  And of course, he never let me pay for them. It’s a father’s prerogative to pay for anything his little girl wants, right?  Even when that little girl is approaching 50.  I never dared to even offer. 

We’d stroll through the orchard’s small market, sampling the different varieties of apples on the shelves.  They always had samples out, with those wedger/corer tools, so people could try them all before deciding which ones they liked the best.  I found a lot of delicious new varieties that way.  Dad and I would reach over the aisles offering something new to the other with a “you gotta try this one!”.  Dad went for the softer kinds – easier to chew with the reduced abilities he was starting to suffer from.  We’d take our bags of apples, plus other things we’d pick out – a squash, some tomatoes, maybe a bottle of local maple syrup, up to the counter.  He’d pay while I went to move the car up to the door to reduce the distance he had to walk.  The walker he used and the oxygen tank he toted prompted many to open the door for him, assist with carrying out the bags, and generally smile at the father/daughter combination that was us.  Oh, how I loved those trips.  The crisp fall air.  The beautiful leaves of the trees in their various stages of autumnal colors as we drove the winding curves of Rt. 6 with all the windows open.  The scent of the market.  The promise of apple juice running down my arm as we enjoyed an apple on the way home.  The look on Sandy’s face as we brought in the haul and she said, “we already have two bottles of maple syrup – why on earth did you buy another?”  And my father’s sheepish grin which said both that he had forgotten, and yet he remembered full well, that they already had some.  It was the purchase that was fun.  The trip out to the country with his daughter that mattered.  

The decision of which orchard to go to each year was always fun.  Should we go to where we always went before or try a new one?  We invariably got lost.  He was absolutely sure where the other one was – no need for me to look it up!  But then as we’d drive on, his failing memory would have us 10 miles out of the way.  So, we’d laugh, loop back and just end up going to the one we always went to.  No matter.  It was a great orchard.  And as I said, it was never about the acquisition of produce.  It was the experience that was magnificent. 

In the fall before Dad passed, on the weekend I was planning on taking him out to the orchard, he was having a bad day.  He wasn’t very lucid and just needed to sleep.  So we didn’t go.  “Next year”, I told him, knowing full well that next year probably wouldn’t happen either. That our trips to the orchard were probably done. 

We enjoyed our last outing together in 2017, stopping for an ice cream cone on the way home.  Vanilla was his choice that day.  Though he favored chocolate at home as an evening snack, vanilla had always been his choice back when we were kids.  He’d take us on a Sunday drive out to the country to get ice cream at a local family’s stand.  As a small girl, I always thought his vanilla choice was boring.  “Why wouldn’t you want something with chunks or swirls in it?!”  But vanilla was what he wanted, what he loved.  It was what he was.  A plain vanilla man whose simplicity shown through like a burst of sunlight through the glass.  Enveloping me in the basic beauty of a hug, of a smile, of the sparkle in his eyes when he looked at me with so much love.  I’m growing to appreciate vanilla more and more.

The only time I saw my father cry was when I graduated from college.  He himself never finished school. I never thought about it before, but I imagine one of his dreams was that his kids complete their schooling, whether it be college, a trade school, or simply high school.  I was the first of his children to earn their degree and was blown away by his reaction at the end of the ceremony.  He grabbed me, hugged me harder than he ever had before, and just wept.  I will remember that moment from 30 years ago for the rest of my life.

It was him that allowed me the opportunity to even go to college.  He raised me in a way that never had me questioning whether or not I could be whatever I wanted.  Never even hinted that a girl couldn’t be successful in a male-dominated field.  I don’t think it ever crossed his mind.  He never discouraged anything I expressed a desire to do. Never hinted at thinking of some other path because college was expensive.  Not having a ton of money though, he wasn’t able to give me a college fund.  I used savings, student loans, grants, scholarships, and work-study programs to pay my way.  It was just the way it was.  I never expected him to fund it, go into debt for it.  It was my goal, my dream, my job to accomplish.  But every quarter, he would slip me what he could to help me pay for books or make my rent.  So many times, he would drive the 3 hours to pick me up and take me home for a weekend or holiday break.  So many times, we’d drive through a snowstorm, wondering if we’d skid off the road.  Once or twice we almost did.  But I was never fearful when Dad was driving.  Always confident in his protective fatherly instinct.  There was just no way anything could ever happen to me when Dad was at the wheel.  Not just in his car, but in life. 

As the song goes, Dad’s “gentle means of sculpting souls took me years to understand; but his blood runs through my instrument and his song is in my soul.”  Thank you, Dad, for everything.  For making sure we never landed in real trouble.  For helping us make it through the hard times.  For not pulling us out of the rubble when you knew it was what we needed.  For always, always, welcoming us home with open arms and with more love than anyone deserves to get from another human being. 

If I had written my dad’s obituary, it would’ve gone something like this:

John Daniel Payne, age 81, went to be with the Man Upstairs on Saturday, August 3, 2019, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease and complications from pneumonia.  He died peacefully at home, lovingly surrounded by his family.  Survived by his wife Sandy; his children John, Mike, Kevin and Alice; his stepchildren Cynthia (Jerry) and Emily (Peter); his sisters Dorothy (Ed) and Mary (Ken); his many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews.  Preceded in death by his mother Ellen, stepfather Joseph, uncle Harlan and grandmother Alice.  John’s focus in life was first and foremost his family.  He didn’t belong to any fancy clubs, organizations, or groups.  His needs were simple.  Retiring from work as a self-employed entrepreneur, he took up his life-long passion of model trains, collecting and exhibiting at shows. He loved being one of Santa’s helpers, riding the scenic railroad trains during the Christmas season and making children smile.  His Santa suit was his pride and joy.  His mischievous Irish ways brought giggles and smiles to all who knew him.  Playing pranks at weddings was his hallmark.  His obsession with being the first to hold every newborn baby in the family was gently accommodated.  He will be greatly missed.  May God bring his soul into Heaven and bring peace to all.  In lieu of flowers, friends and family are encouraged to donate in John’s memory to the Church of the Epiphany, Parkinson’s research or the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.