Dad: Eulogy

Bonnie @ Faith Barista has invited us to share our thoughts on Father’s Day:

 

Every couple of weeks that year, I strapped my two-year old daughter into her car seat in my old Toyota Camry for the eight-hour drive to western Pennsylvania. During long stretches across Interstate 80, my mind began composing lines, rearranging words, and editing sentences. I was writing my father’s eulogy.

We knew he was dying. The words brain tumor have got to be two of the scariest in the English language, and the one assaulting my father was the nastiest kind known to medical science. My family sought treatment for Dad; we wept, we prayed, we kept hope as best we could, but each of us was brought to the point of acceptance and of letting go. And the only way I knew how to let go was with words—words that would bear witness to the daddy I loved.

Donald Charles Owens, October 24, 1928 - December 11, 1992)

I asked my mom and siblings to share some of their favorite memories about Dad. My mom remembered the way Dad, a meat cutter by trade, used to like to stop by supermarkets while on vacation to check out the displays in their meat departments. My sister talked of Dad chaperoning her high school trip to Quebec. She also remembered the time she walked to the store where Dad worked and, in tears, begged him to allow her to get a kitten. One brother’s memories centered mostly on the game of baseball. He remembered Dad coaching him in Little League, playing catch with the neighborhood kids, and sending him clippings from the sports pages. My other brother recalled the time Dad wanted desperately to help a local boy in need of a bone marrow transplant. Since he was ineligible to be a donor, Dad called my brother and asked, rather sheepishly, if he might consider being tested as a possible match. Dad had a big heart for the underdogs in life, those who struggled and were in need of encouragement or a helping hand.

I wasn’t sure I would be able to deliver Dad’s eulogy, but I am thankful that God gave me the grace to do it. In part, this is what I read:

I remember vividly the night we began having family devotions. Coming home from a Sunday evening service, Dad responded to the pastor’s challenge to fathers to assume responsibility as the spiritual head of the home. Even as his tumor progressed, impairing his ability to read and speak, Dad persevered to read from scripture during those nightly family devotions.

Even after Dad had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, he prayed for those who were most dear to him. He struggled to pray for each of his grandchildren by name. He asked the Lord to help him be a good husband to his wife.

Dad faced his illness bravely and with dignity. While many of us grieved and pondered the seeming unfairness of Dad’s illness, he never gave in to bitterness or despair. He maintained hope and fought for as long as the Lord gave him strength.

I suppose that, by many standards, Dad’s life would be considered far from glamorous. I am sure that there were many things he would like to have done but was not able. Yet the words of the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonian church seem a fitting account of Dad’s life:

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. I Thessalonians 4:11, 12 (NIV)

Dad did not pursue a life of pleasure and ease. He acknowledged his need for God’s mercy and forgiveness, and gave himself to those things which were honorable, noble, and of eternal significance. He was a faithful husband. He worked hard and cared about others. He honored his commitments and encouraged his family in the knowledge of the Lord. For these things he has won our respect, our thanks, and our love which is stronger than death.

And now that his flesh and heart have failed

                And mortal life has ceased,

He doth possess within the veil

                A life of joy and peace.  (Amazing Grace, adapted)