Reflections of an Adoring Daughter

How do you measure the life of a man?  How does one choose words that will adequately convey impressions and memories?  This post is obviously dedicated to my father.  The thing is, he’s not here to read it.  He died of kidney cancer in 1994.  He was fifty-six years old.  I was thirty-two at the time and all grown-up, but his death left a hole in his little girl’s heart that still hasn’t mended.  Oh, I don’t mean that I still feel the stabbing sorrow of grief or that I even think of him daily.  I mean that when his spirit left his mortal frame, something in me left too.  There is just a part of me that feels incomplete somehow.  He was wonderful.  And he taught me to view the world through his eyes.  Those amazing crystal blue eyes.  I once saw a pristine mountain lake nestled in the Rockies.  It breathtakingly reflected the blue of the sky.  It was the same blue of Dad’s eyes.

His name was Ron Miller and his older sisters called him Ronnie to his dying day, which I always thought was incredibly endearing.  He was the youngest of five children, and the one born after the death of Infant Richard.  Dad’s birth brought healing and joy to the Miller household and he was doted on and adored by siblings and parents.  He was living proof that life does indeed go on, even when hearts are missing pieces of itself. 

Dad met my mother during their college years and they married young and started their family just nine months and three weeks after their June wedding.  Enter Vonda.  I was the beginning of their journey into parenthood and I was the sole recipient of their love and affection (and trial and error) for three years.  My father loved me instantly, I’m sure.  I loved him too, but I also grew to admire and more importantly, respect him.

I think he really had wanted a son, and maybe I should feel some displaced sense of rejection by that, but truthfully, it was always OK.  He created a woodworking shop in our basement, and when he got home from his job as K-12 principle in a private school, he would head to his Man Cave and putter his frustrations away.  Instead of banishing me away from his therapeutic setting, he invited me to join him and would give me “jobs” sorting screws or sweeping sawdust.  I didn’t care what the task was, I just wanted to be in his presence.  His quiet demeanor was comfort itself.  He would speak quietly of life and life lessons.  I couldn’t tell you specific things he said, but I know they were formative for me and helped shape my life view.  Whatever I have become began during those quiet evenings of busy nothingness.

One of my most cherished memories displays the stuff Ron Miller was made of.  I developed a love of rocks very early in life.  I don’t know why.  They just intrigued me.  Vacations were interesting because I wanted to carry home a cache of rocks with roughly the weight of a chest freezer.  I wasn’t interested in small, easy-to-transport stones.  No, I wanted BOULDERS.  I would stuff them into every crevice of the car or camper.  Dad would sigh and roll his eyes when he discovered them, but he never asked me to leave one rock behind.  He knew they were important to me, hence, getting them home for me was important to him.

To further encourage my interest, my parents gave me a rock tumbler for Christmas one year.  I was thrilled.  But they forgot to tell me how to dispose of the grit required for polishing.  So I innocently sent it down the drain of the basement sink.  It gave the septic system indigestion.  A plumber’s visit and hefty bill later, I was back in business.  I also received a complimentary crash course in Pipe-ology.  But do you know what my dad did after that?  Did he end my rock polishing days and hide my tumbler?  Nope.  When my grit supplies ran out, he pored through the yellow pages looking for suppliers (pre-Google days, of course), and finding one finally, he left work early one day to drive from our suburban home to downtown St. Louis to pick it up for me.  The twinkle in those blue eyes when he surprised me with it remains indelibly burned into my memory.  Such a small thing and yet it spoke of love and sacrifice.  I fell in love even more on that day.

I learned to love World War II movies just so I could share that particular interest with him.  He was born in ’38, so The War was a memorable part of his childhood.  He talked of rationing and scrap drives.  He was fascinated with anything that had to do with that era.  I wanted to share that with him.  He welcomed me with open arms.

Domestic, he was not.  My mother once left for two weeks to visit her parents. He was at a loss at mealtimes.  One night, he opened a can of pork and beans, set the can in the middle of the table, then handed my sister and I each a fork.  That was supper.  I was never so glad to see my mother’s face return.

He was always the authoritarian in the home, but he was also a fair and impartial judge, a sensitive caregiver, and a hard-working provider.  My younger sister and I got the best of his youth and time, I feel.  As he aged and our family grew to include two baby brothers, he worked harder and seemed to have less time to relax and enjoy family.  Work was where his heart and mind were most of the time.  I feel badly about that, especially in light of his early death.  I wish my brothers had known the father I had known as a young child. And yet, he loved them no less and they knew that.

As I matured into adolescence, he stepped back and allowed me to navigate the choppy waters of hormones and insecurities.  I was angry and moody A LOT.  To my shame, I even hung up on him once when he ticked me off.  When he got home that night, he wasn’t the angry parent I expected to see.  He was just so HURT.  It broke my heart that I had broken his.  It never happened again. 

During my college years, he seemed to innately know the problems and issues I was dealing with.  I mean, he KNEW.  It was freaky in a way.  He would always promise me, “I’m praying for you, honey.”  And I knew he meant it.

When John and I announced our engagement, my dad decided that he wanted to do something special for my wedding.  He set about to write a song to sing to me during the ceremony.  Here’s the kicker.  My dad was not a songwriter.  He had a beautiful singing voice, but I don’t think he had ever attempted to write music.  Why that idea burrowed into his head, I’ll never know.  But as The Big Day grew closer, he promised me that My Song would be ready.  I thought the whole idea was adorable, but really didn’t expect a Grammy for Song of the Year.  He enlisted the help of a gifted pianist he knew to help arrange the music and when he took the microphone and those first melodic notes began, I melted.  He sang his blessing to us, and I don’t think there was a dry eye in the place.

When my first baby was born, his first grandchild, Dad nearly burst with pride and joy.  He was exultant.  He rediscovered the joy of little children and became a doting grandfather.  He tapped the maple trees in his massive Vermont yard and took little Trevor with him to check the sap buckets.  He spoke to Trevor, and then Ryan, and eventually Cody, of a loving Heavenly Father.  He took seriously his role of patriarch and endeavored to steer them into Paths of Righteousness.  I loved him for that.

When dad was diagnosed with Stage 4 kidney cancer, I was devastated.  It just COULDN’T be too late for treatment.  No!  How could he be dying and nobody know it until it was too late to help him?!  I was frustrated and frantic.  Dad was calm.  His life was in God’s hands.  He had trusted Him in life.  He would trust Him even in the face of death.

The doctors said Dad had anywhere from two weeks to two months left to live.  He was sent home to live out his final days.  Our gift from God was the quality of those last days.  Dad was alert and relatively pain-free until the very end.  My mother was left reeling trying to care for her spouse in his final days and keeping their counseling/retreat center running.  The driving to doctor’s appointments and his minor care was granted to me.  It was a high honor.  It gave Dad and I time to rewind the years and step back into those sweet, sweet days of sitting in the sawdust of his workshop, quietly sharing the minutia of life. 

We spoke of fond memories, and cherished family members, and faith.  As I watched him live out his final days, I realized with startling clarity that life can be boiled down to just two things; family and faith.  Nothing else was important to Dad.  He didn’t dwell on career, or the countless people he had helped, or money.  None of that stuff mattered anymore.  He just wanted to be surrounded by his family members and he wanted to be comforted by the God who had been the center of his life. 

I had watched him live well.  Now I watched to see if he would die well.  He had moments of discouragement, and grieved his own coming death.  Those moments were difficult to witness.  But his faith never wavered.  He knew he would awaken in the presence of the Creator of the Universe and all was well with his soul.

Six days before he died, he asked if I would give him a haircut.  He was frail, weak, and his skin waxy yellow.  But he was still alert and could sit up unassisted.  I complied (I had cut his hair for years), and we chatted about everything and nothing.  Little did I know that I was grooming him for his own funeral.  That may sounds morbid, but life is uncomfortable at times.  I was glad later that I had taken the time to care for him in such a small way.

Over the next couple of days, he began to fail fast and eventually could no longer speak.  The last time he spoke words to me, he patted my face tenderly and said, “You are so precious to me.”  And I knew he couldn’t have meant it more.  Precious words from a precious man.

My husband and I spent most of Dad’s last week at his side, but one night we decided to go home and see our children for a few moments and sleep in our own bed.  We had just fallen into an exhausted sleep when the phone rang.  It was our pastor’s wife, Beth.  “Hurry,” she urged without preamble.  “He’s dying.”  We threw our clothes on in a frantic rush and flew to his side.  She met us at the kitchen door.  “He’s waiting for you.”  I ran up the two flights of steps to his room and stumbled breathlessly into Death’s Chamber.  I shrank back when I saw his face.  I had heard of the Mask of Death and knew instinctively that I was eyewitness to it now.  He looked monstrous, and I was afraid.  His eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow, and his teeth barred.  But then he turned to look at me with those crystal blue eyes I knew so well and I gained courage.  I rushed to his side and laid my head on his chest.  “Dad!” I sobbed out.  Deep, racking tears from some inner wellspring convulsed my being.  His gentle hand reached up and clasped mine.  I can’t explain why, but he relaxed and his features regained normalcy.  My best guess is it simply wasn’t time yet.  He lived three more days. 

The morning of his Homecoming, Christmas Eve Day, I awoke after only two hours of sleep.  John and I had spent the night caring for him so others could sleep and had just fallen into bed, it seemed.  I heard an inner voice before my eyes opened.  “Get up!” it urged.  My eyes were instantly open and I was immediately wide-awake.  I had slept in my clothes and now headed to the kitchen for breakfast.  I walked by Dad’s bedside and saw that he was in a blessed haze of morphine relief.  My mother was sitting on a stool beside him, staring at his face, memorizing every line and curve.  I grabbed the newspaper and settled into a chair at the foot of his bed.  I had just started on the headlines when my mother’s voice arrested my attention.  “Oh!  OH!!”  She was half-off her chair now.  “It’s time!”  I still wonder how she KNEW.  My gaze shifted to dad’s face.  His head was lifted off his pillow and he was staring wide-eyed at my mother.  Whether he was looking directly at her or at something unseen by the rest of us I cannot say.  I only know that he was completely AWARE.  

My sister-in-law ran downstairs to pound on doors and roust everyone from bed.  They came hurrying up, wiping sleep from confused eyes.  We gathered in a tight circle around Dad’s bed and waited… for what, we weren’t sure.  When we were all there, Dad’s eyes fluttered up in his head.  It looked to me as though his spirit was being pulled from his body through the top of his head.  And then his eyes… those crystal blue eyes, lost their spark and life.   

He was gone.   

I became so acutely aware in that moment that the human body is a mere shell for the spirit.  We really are eternal beings.  I will never doubt that he lives on in Heaven.

It was such an honor to be present at that moment.  I think that was the moment I grew up.  It changed me forever.  It was sacred, holy, and hushed.

We stood there unsure what to do next.  And then someone (I think it was me) began singing in an unsteady voice and the rest joined in:

It is finished.  The Battle is over.

It is finished.  There’ll be no more war.

It is finished, the end of the conflict.

It is finished, and Jesus is Lord.

All in attendance could feel a Holy Presence in that room.  It was time to make calls and fall into action.  There is an unwritten script that must be followed after all.   

And yet we lingered there for a moment longer, unwilling to break the spell.  I had witnessed the miracle of birth with my children, and now I had experienced the wonder of one being ushered into eternity.

I will always be grateful for the father that life handed me.  He was good and kind and gentle.  But he was also a man of great character and integrity. 

All that I am I owe to your example, Dad.  You taught me that it is never too late to pursue a dream.  You taught me to be courageous in the face of fear.  You taught me that words have meaning, so choose them carefully.  You showed me that life is too short to harbor grudges.  And by example, you taught me that a person’s reputation is the only lasting thing in a life.

And so on this Father’s Day, I celebrate the life of a man that was great and is greatly missed.

Thanks, Dad, for teaching me to love deeply, to forgive freely, and to live a life honoring to God.

You live on through me.  

I hope I do you justice.

Can He Show a Girl A Good Time, Or What??

It began with my husband’s generous offer over breakfast.  “Would you like to go out for dinner tonight?”  I paused my caloric intake briefly, the fork that held my next bite of French toast suspended in mid-air.  Dinner out tonight?  My ears perked up.  But on some subconscious level alarm bells and sirens went off in my wary brain.  I’m not implying that eating out is a rare event, but John Dahl is notoriously frugal.  He used to dumpster dive for pop cans when we lived in Vermont because each can fetched a nickel.  Bottles a whopping dime.  It’s how we funded date nights in those days.  With four kids and a stretched budget, eating out meant finding alternate sources of funding.  He could spot an empty can at 50 yards and stop on a dime to save it.

So when he slid his arm around me this morning and popped his question with a twinkle in his eye, I was immediately suspect.  My brain began a mental search of possible reasons for this sudden insanity.  My synapses, like Willy Wonka’s Oompa-Loompas frantically went through file folders and piles of mental papers looking for clues.  I could feel the answer bubbling to the surface and threw a life raft to it.  Yes!  I grabbed it and pulled it to shore.  With equal spit and spunk, I flung at him, “Isn’t tonight the telephone cooperative’s annual meeting?”  He grinned that boyish smile of his at me and asked, “wanna’ go?”  No, I really didn’t, thank you very much.  The Dahl Taxi has been on the road so much I’m ready to install a meter on the dash.  I really had looked forward to an evening at home.  “Take one of the boys,” was my immediate response.

But as I thought about it a couple of minutes later, I reconsidered.  After all, I hadn’t had the time or freedom to go for the last two years.  My studies had taken precedence over everything else.  But now I finally had some breathing room and more time on my hands, so I found him before he left for the day and announced, “OK, I’ll go.”  He didn’t seem at all surprised by my change of heart.  And he was clearly pleased.  Our date was back on.

I worked in my classroom for half a day (why is it the more cleaning and organizing I do in there the worse it looks?), then made my way home to get ready for my “big night.”  What does one wear to a telephone cooperative annual meeting?  Ball gown?  Probably not.  Sunday casual?  Too dressy.  I ran down to the kitchen to take a quick look at the outdoor thermometer.  Fifty-nine degrees at 4:30 in the afternoon?  Looks like I’m going in jeans and a turtleneck.  Yes really.  Yes, I KNOW it’s the 9^th of June.  I really hate to be cold.  No, I’m not sure what I’m doing living on the northern plains.  Brrrr. 

We arrived a half-hour into the feasting, registered our names for the prize drawings, received our ballot (just one ballot to share.  I guess husbands and wives are expected to think and vote with one brain) and was handed our red bag of BEK goodies.  This year’s offerings included two pens (for filling out the ballot, of course), and a set of jumper cables.  Well, it’s a unique idea anyway.  Kind of like giving away cookbooks at a Time Share presentation.  One has nothing to do with the other, but it does grab your attention, Our buffet line found smiling cooperative employees serving home baked buns, beef barbeque, beans, coleslaw, coffee, and ice cream bars.  Not finding any empty seats in the cafeteria, we headed outdoors to the picnic table (now that turtleneck was coming in real handy).  Thankfully, the wind wasn’t screaming at 30 miles per hour, so at least it was bearable out there.  The food was tasty and when we were through, we made our way to the gymnasium for the much anticipated meeting.  The crowning moment of our special evening, if you will.  I could hardly wait.

We made our way to the bleachers so we could sit up high enough to see the stage (I’m down to my last contact lens and forgot my glasses so there is a fine covering of fuzz on everything I look at).  As we took our seats, I couldn’t help but notice all the white heads filling the seats around us.  “What do you think the average age in this room is?”  John whispered to me.  “It looks like the demographic of that Elton John concert we just went to,” I laughingly replied.  I could only hope that the there was at least one defibrillator on hand for the evening.

John went to say hello to our friend and one the cooperative board directors, Sanford, and as waited for his return I caught the conversation being held to my right.  Most of the white hair around me sat atop the heads of second (or even first) generation Germans.  Since moving to North Dakota I have been enthralled with the rich cultural heritage of this place.  The stories of immigration and survival are legend in these parts.  Someday I’ll devote a post to these amazing, heart wrenching and heart warming stories.  Many of the old-timers sitting around me were born to parents who came to America with the promise of free land and a better life.  German was the sole language spoken in their homes and the English language was often taught to the parents after the children began attending school and became fluent in it.  Even now, the thick German brogue is heavy in the conversations floating around me.  “Not so many here tonight,” one laments.  “No,” another agrees.  “The Olt-Timers are tying off, and the young vuns don’t dang care!”   An astute observation, I felt.  I had to admit to myself that I am one of those “young vuns.”  The business of the cooperative really does not interest me in the least.  I pay my bills and enjoy the services provided by the cooperative, but many of those around me remember the days of no phone service and when it did come, via the Rural Electrification Act, they often had to share a party line with neighbors.  John and I have laughed at the stories of those who lived those days and claim that the neighbors would frequently listen in on private conversations.  When the call would come to an end, they would hear the click of all the other lines hanging up as well.

So maybe I should care a little more about the privilege of phone service that I so take for granted.  OK, point well taken.

Now it was time for the Color Guard to march the flags to the stage.  Again, the collective experiences of those with whom I shared a stuffy gymnasium for the evening understood better than I ever would how precious a thing it is to stand at attention for Old Glory.  They had lost brothers and fathers to wars and would never forget the immense sacrifice that our freedom demands.  The Color Guard members were men-of-a-certain-age who looked smart in their uniforms and proudly represented the military for the evening.  They had just a bit of trouble navigating the turn in the aisle and got jumbled up for a brief moment, but quickly went shoulder to shoulder again and accomplished their mission as required. 

We next heard the National Anthem from a pair of Scandinavian blond high-schoolers who did a lovely job of harmonizing A cappella.  Then the hilarity of the evening began. 

I’m kidding.

It was reports and elections and questions from the floor.  A pretty subdued bunch, overall.  But the business that needed doing was accomplished and just like that, it was time for door prizes.  Now the mood lightened and folks snapped to attention.  This was why most had stayed (including the Dahls).  John just had a feeling that tonight was our night.  That flat screen television or laptop was OURS.  The five-gallon bucket was carried to the podium by the cooperative’s version of Vanna White.  She fished through all 400-and-some-odd names in that bucket, and pulled out………. someone else' name.  The German woman up one row and over three seats declared, “She alfays whins.”  Every dive into the bucket found every name but ours (remember, only one name from every couple got placed in the Magic Bucket. Spouses don’t count).  Even when they had given away the big stuff, and then the knife sets, and the back pack, and finally, the leftovers from the evening meal (no, I’m not kidding.  I actually would have been thrilled to take a whole roast home to the Ravenous Wolves living at my house for the summer).  But no, Vanna never did find my elusive name.  Oh well. 

We took the final give-away as our cue to head for home.  As we stepped into the brisk autumn (?) air I smiled to myself.  It had been such a joy to be doing something luxurious like go to a local cooperative meeting. My life has been an unbroken string of classes, studying, and then starting a teaching job in a blur of busyness.  To be able to decide that I had nothing going on that couldn’t wait another day felt downright delicious. 

I had eaten a free meal, been given the jumper cables of my dreams (yeah, a little tongue-in-cheek there), and been reminded that my life is easy and full of comfort and convenience.  We of the younger generation (I felt downright teenager-ish tonight in comparison), forget that our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents got by with much less and worked way harder for the comforts of life.  Everything comes so easy now.  We flip switches, and push buttons, get in our cars, power up our computers, and really don’t give any of it a second thought.  We just assume those things will always be there.  Maybe they will and maybe they won’t.  Either way, I think we can take a page from the book of the Greatest Generation.  They understand how hard things used to be and appreciate how easy things are now.  

 I will try to follow their lead and not take life’s luxuries for granted.  I know I still will here and there.  I have lived an indulged life.  But I have to start somewhere.  Tonight brought me a step closer.

And maybe next year one of those roasts will come home with me…