A Couple Days Away

Well, the funeral is over, everyone is back home. It's been quite a couple of weeks. Emotionally, physically, mentally wrung out. We're going to go away for a couple of days and try to give my daughter at least a little, mini vacation before school starts. It feels quite weird to do so, I must say! So soon after the funeral. But we need to relax a bit. I'll post some more pictures when I get back. For now, here's a link to a video of the funeral my brother took on his phone. So the quality isn't the best, but hopefully you'll be able to hear it all. It really was quite a wonderful service. :-) The first time - and maybe the only time - my brother and I and my nephew will all lead a service together and preach together. A fitting tribute to my father, and the blessing he was to us all.

Miss you, Dad.

Funeral Day

It's early. No one else up yet. My body always gets up early, so I am up. So a few early morning, funeral day thoughts . . .

Everyone arrived safely last night. Got the rooms squared away. A little time to visit.

Today will be a whirlwind. Setting things up at the church. Going over details for the service with my brother and nephew. The emotion of closing the casket. The service - hope I make it through my sermon. The committal - that will be tough. Visiting other family graves. Lunch - that should be relaxing. Then back to the hotel to relax and remember and smile for a while.

It won't be a big funeral, Dad outlived almost everyone he knew! But family, nieces and nephews that knew and loved him, some old friends from church. Kind of appropriate - Dad wasn't a big crowds kind of guy. Liked his space. Sitting at home with Mom. Petting his dogs.

Tomorrow will be the start of a new chapter, no doubt about that. And we'll see where and how God leads. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Today first.

Thank You, Lord, for Your faithfulness to us. To Dad.
Thank You for all that You did for him through his life.
Thank You for calling, enlightening, sanctifying, and keeping Dad in the one true faith.
Thank You for making me his son.
Thank You for making me Your son, so I know I will see him again.
Thank You.

Obituary

Here is the link to my father's obituary on the funeral home web site, if you'd like to read it.

Also, here's a picture my wife had on her phone that I love. It just shows my Dad really well, I think. Happy. How I want to remember him.

He loved them to the End

As we were driving to Philadelphia yesterday to make arrangements for my father's funeral, I was thinking that though difficult, this is all part of loving my father to the end - even to the taking care of his body until the day of resurrection. So we visited him in memory care every day, we sat and stayed with him while sick, and we held his hands as he breathed his last. Now we will lovingly lay his body in the grave, and we'll continue to love him to the end.

So I then thought of Jesus on the night of His death. In John 13 we hear: when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Do you see how Jesus reverses things here (as He always does)? We love our dying loved one to the end, but Jesus is the dying one loving his loved ones to the end! He is the one taking care of us. And He'll continue until there are no more ends or endings, only eternity. And then He'll love us forever.

How cool is that?

If you're at Saint Athanasius next year on Holy Thursday, you'll probably hear this in the sermon. :-)

And the greatest of these is love (1 Cor 13).

Indeed.

+ Dad +

How long, O Lord? We got our answer. 2:17 am, Monday morning, August 12. That is when my father fell asleep in Jesus. My wife and I and my sister were able to be with him his last few hours here. It was rough. It seems so long ago already. Yet the sadness is still fresh. We read Scripture and hymns those last couple of hours. I tried to sing, but couldn't. We commended him into the hands of his Saviour. The same hands that baptized him when he was just over a month old, now came to take him home when he was 95 years old. Rejoice! Cry. Smile. Remember. Lots of remembering.

When my Mom died we still had Dad. Now that Dad has died it is a new time in life. One that will take some getting used to.

The Memory Care where my Dad lived the last three years is a place called Sunrise. They have lots of buildings here in Virginia. The aides were very good with him, and many of them came in and wept with us. They really cared for him. That's what we liked about the place. Many of them became like a second family to him and to us.

After my father's passing came the waiting with him and caring for his body. My dear wife at my side the whole time. What would I do without her? When morning broke (pictures below) a Hospice Nurse came and did her necessary work. Then a funeral home came to take his body. He will be transported to Pennsylvania where he was born and raised and spent most of his life. We'll have a service at his church, St. Mark's in Ridley Park, where we grew up and where he is still officially a member (over 50 years!), and then he'll lie beside my Mom awaiting the glorious resurrection on the Last Day.

Yesterday we also tended to some necessaries - while waiting for the men to come and take the hospital supplies that had been rented for him, we started cleaning out his room. Again, rejoicing, crying, smiling, remembering, crying with the afternoon shift of aides coming in . . . It was a really long day.

Today it is up to Pennsylvania to meet with the funeral home. My Dad had most of the details pre-planned, but still a few things to do and papers to sign. Then to the church to meet with the Pastor there. My brother and I (I believe) will conduct the funeral for him. We didn't want to with my Mom, but both of us wanted to with my Dad. Interesting. And then back home. So another long day today.

Finally, some pictures for you. First, the final sunrise at Sunrise, looking out his window there, as we await the Son to arise, return, and raise all the faithful to life with Him.

And a few of my Dad at Sunrise:

Seeing his granddaughter off to college. He really, really loved his grandkids!

Meeting his great-grandchild Elijah (from Florida) at his 92nd birthday party. He would up with six grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren. So as we would tell him, that makes him pretty great!

All together for Father's Day.

Petting Danny Boy, the Memory Care cat. Sadly, Danny moved out the last year my father was there. He really liked Danny. One day he said: "All my life I've been a dog person, and here I went and got myself a cat!"  :-)

With his daughter. She had a special place in his heart. His pet name for her was "Suze." Not sure why, it just was.

Getting together for communion. Had more than a few times at his kitchen table there, along with his devotions every day.

My wife and I would often take turns visiting Dad, to make sure he got a visit nearly every day. But sometimes we got to go together, too, and "double team" him!

Birthday boy! This was his 94th, I believe.

Father's Day pizza. He loved his pizza! Pepperoni, always.

His last Christmas with us. He didn't really "get" unwrapping and receiving his gifts this year, but the present he LOVED was his two granddaughters playing Christmas hymns on their violins for him and singing along. We sang a lot that special day.

I love this picture of him. How I will remember him. Making me cry even now . . .

Update on My Father

How long, O Lord? We read that in a psalm this morning. How often we ask that of the Lord in all kinds of circumstances and situations. We tend to be an impatient people.

How much time will the Lord give my father? We do not know. He is still with us. He is strong, but it will be when the Lord decides. We had a nurse practitioner come in yesterday and offer to increase his morphine "to slow his breathing." I was the only one here at the time, and that sounded funny to me. He wasn't breathing overly rapidly, so why would we want to do that? I told her to wait to speak to my wife (a registered nurse) first before changing anything. So later, my wife spoke to her and she was much more blunt with my wife as to the reason: to speed things up (let the reader understand). No! That's not how we do things. It a good caution to us: people often try to make things that are not good sound good.

In situations like these - and I've dealt with them often as a pastor but not so often as a son - we aim always to care, never to kill. The Lord may grant him healing and then we will rejoice in the added time we have received as a gift. Or, the Lord may call him home to his eternal rest and joy. And then we will rejoice in the life promised and now given. But we will wait for the Lord (another good phrase from the psalms!). And even if it takes a long time and is difficult, it is good.

A friend of mine, a former parishioner, and brother pastor Chris Yang and his wife Jenny came to visit Thursday night. My dad supported him through seminary and while he served as a missionary in Asia. They came by to see my dad here a couple of years ago when they were on home service from Asia. It was very nice of them to come by and speak the Word of God to my father and sing to him.

But today, another day of vigil with him . . .

As a Father Lay Dying

Note: I do not actually know how close my father is to falling asleep in Jesus. His hospice nurse informed us today that she did not believe it would be long. So I wrote down some thoughts as I sat with him today . . .

Sitting at the bedside of your of dying father, many thoughts cross through your mind.

You see the ravages of sin.

You see a man who served in World War II.

A man who always wondered how he got so lucky when he married his wife.

The man so strong when I was young, now so frail, fighting for every breath.

The man who took care of my mother when she herself lay dying with cancer.

You think about all this man did for me when I was growing up.

This day is like the Tower of Babel - he is trying to communicate with me, but I cannot understand what he's trying to say.

You see him looking . . . but what is he looking at?
What is he thinking about?

He's comforted by my being there. I know that. He reaches out for me. Often. Wants to know I'm there.

He's tired. And not just from this sickness, but from 95 years of life.

Most of me wants him to have his rest, to fall asleep in Jesus. But part of me wants him to stay.

His father died before I was born - how was that for him?

He's the youngest in his family, and the last to go. Soon a whole generation will have moved on. It's a new time in life for me and my brother and sister. We're the oldest now. Or soon will be . . .

The last six years, caring for him, I've learned a lot. But I learned a lot from him my whole life.

He taught me how to play golf, and to be honest doing so.

He taught me how to build with wood, and how to garden.

He taught me doing repairs around the house.

When I was in Junior High, he once drove me two hours to a band competition after I was late and missed the bus for it.

I remember him praying in the wee hours of the morning before going to work.

I remember family devotions after dinner, every night.

I remember the special, handmade valentines he made for my mom.

I remember stringing Christmas lights with him, then for him. And decorating the Christmas tree every year.

He served in the church in just about every role he could, including congregational president, head elder, trustee, and more.

I remember sitting out in the backyard with him after dinner. He'd sometimes smoke a cigar and we'd just sit and talk.

I remember the surprise retirement party we threw for him.

I remember how he taught me that family always comes first.

The last six years haven't been easy, but I'm glad I got to give back some of the care he always gave me.

Like when I was in college and he was unemployed my last two years. He was just about down to his last dollar, but he got me through - and never even told me how close it was until years later.

He kept a plaster of paris handprint I made for him when I was 5 or 6 years old. It's still in his dresser - we saw it tonight!

It's funny the things you think sitting by the bedside of your dying father . . .

Thank you, Lord, for giving me such a father.

Lord, let at last your angels come . . .