Death of a Parent
The Eulogy I Gave For My Dad: A Guest Post
Tor Constantino is an ex-journalist, current public relations professional who has worked for CBS Radio and ABC, CBS television stations. He contributes to RELEVANT magazine, http://ChristianPost.com, SCL and his blog, http://www.torconbooks.com. You can also follow him on Twitter.
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Tor Constantino
It feels surreal and unnatural to lose both parents within such a brief span of time – little more than two years.
I went to church and sat next to my father this past Sunday and did not expect a phone call the next day saying he was gone.
I did not expect that my parents would not live to see any of their 12 grandchildren get married. I did not expect that they would not live to see their great-grand babies. And I certainly did not expect that they would not live to see the age of 65.
Up until this past Monday when he passed, I did not expect anything less than another 15 or 25 good years to share with him.
But the thing I expected least of all was the deep peace of mind and spirit that I have knowing that he’s reunited with my mother.
Ever since she passed away in 2004, he had not been happy. My sisters, brother and I tried to spend a lot more time with him. Our respective families took him out to meals, coffees, worked around his house, took him on walks and drives around the lake to improve his spirits – to little avail.
At one point, I was so frustrated with his listlessness that I selfishly and angrily confronted him to “snap out of it” and get on with his life. Questioning him whether or not his surviving family members and extended family were enough?
He quietly replied that he deeply loved each and every one of us. But he shared that all the extra attention and effort we applied to him, was bitter sweet because Gwen (my mother) wasn’t there to share it with him.
He quietly shared further that no matter how much we loved on him and spent time with him – each of us ultimately had to leave him to return to our own families and homes each day. It seems that our daily departures from him unintentionally sharpened the painful void of my mother’s memory.
That was an unexpected insight into grief for me. Without minimizing it, such a loss is somewhat akin to a painter losing their sight; a musician losing their hearing or a chef their sense of taste. Everything they love to do and experience in life is affected and changed, because their point of contact that helped define each moment was no longer there. My mother was that point of contact for my father.
My dad loved us five kids and deeply loved his grandkids – but I now know that he was sad that he could no longer share those moments with my mom.
Trust me as I tell you, I miss them both – but as I said, I did not expect the peace I now have in their absence knowing they’re together.
Some kids get from their dads a love for baseball and can quote player statistics all day long. Some develop a love for hunting and fishing that lasts a lifetime. Still others develop a passion for cars and working along side their father restoring a classic engine.
While my dad never had a passion for baseball, hunting or cars – there is a passion that he had that transferred to me and that was a passion for the word of God and an eternal faith in Christ.
Everyday I’m grateful for that gift of faith my father imparted to me, especially on a day like today.
Earlier this week, my wife came across an email from a woman who attends our church and at the end of the email there was a quote that I’d like to share, it reads:
“The true measure of a man’s wealth is what he has invested in eternity.”
That quote has lingered with me, because it was a standard that my dad could measure up to. Anybody who truly knew my dad would agree that by that eternal standard – he was one of the wealthiest men they knew, and that’s evidenced by the overwhelming number of us here today to honor his memory.
My dad was always ready to listen, pray and offer words of wisdom through the scriptures to anyone who sought him out.
During calling hours last evening, I can’t tell you how many people – some were family friends, others were complete strangers – who came through the receiving line telling me, that my dad was a “father-figure” to them when they did not have one; or the incredible role and impact that he had on their lives; or how his faith and family had been an inspiration to them.
“The true measure of a man’s wealth is what he has invested in eternity.”
Having said all that – after losing both parents so close together with decades of life still ahead of them both – it’s easy to point an accusing finger to heaven and claim that such a loss is unfair and is a cruel cosmic joke.
The knee jerk reaction is to demand an answer from God to the question – Why????
Why are they both gone?
Why should I go on without them?
Why did this loving couple of such demonstrated faith have to die so young?
Why our parents?
All of those “why” questions and many others came flooding into my mind when I heard that my dad died – because I loved him as much as I loved my mother.
Interestingly, those questions about “why” it happened, reminded me of a passage I read in a book titled A Grief Observed.
After my mom passed, I shared the book with my dad. It’s written by C.S. Lewis – an avowed atheist who became one of the greatest Christian writers and theologians of the 20th Century.
Lewis wrote the book shortly after the death of his wife, Joy Davidson, to cancer. To be honest, I don’t know if my dad ever read the book I gave him – but I’d like to read a bit of it to you about the “why” questions we all experience when we lose a loved one:
When I lay these [why] questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He (God) shook His head – not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.’
Can a mortal ask questions which Gods finds unanswerable? Yes, because all nonsense questions are unanswerable. Questions such as, ‘Is yellow square or round? Or ‘How many hours are in a mile?’ – have no answers. Probably half the questions we ask – half of our great theological and metaphysical problems – are nonsensical questions.
What that passage suggests is that all of our “why” questions about tragedy are the wrong types of questions to ask.
After last night’s calling hours – considering the hundreds, possibly thousands of lives my parents positively touched – I was thinking about what are the correct or right-type of questions I should ask. Questions that are not nonsensical to God and that He wants to answer for me regarding the death of my parents.
After the long line of people from last night’s calling hours who shared story-after-story about my dad’s positive impact on their lives – there was one question that came to my heart,
“HOW can I be more like my father?”
And the answer from God came to my heart as quick as the question,
“The true measure of a person’s wealth is what they invest in eternity.”
Despite the pain, the loss, the grief – I had an answer from heaven that brought me true inner peace. I had an answer and direction, that I’m to continue in this life and my faith until I’ve reached its end and finished well – just as my father did.
I will continue to pursue the true eternal inheritance of dad and seek to have a positive impact on those lives I happen to touch – just as my father did and continues to, even in his death.
Having answered the question of “why” and why there’s a better question to ask when faced with tragedy, I ask if you’re rich in the truth, wealthy in faith and fully invested in eternity? On the other side of death’s veil, will you know that you finished well?
Allowing your life to become the answers to those questions, is worthy of life and ensures a life of worth.
Dressing Dad
Today, Ken Knickerbocker and I are trading posts. Ken generously provides the residents of Parkesburg, Pennsylvania (which is where my wife and I reside) with “Parkesburg’s News and Happenings” at his website, Parkesburg Today, fulfilling a much needed service to our community.
On May 1st of this year Ken suffered the loss of his father. I’ve always thought one of the best things we can do as we experience loss is try and write our thoughts down. Not only has Ken done this, but he was gracious enough to share his thoughts here, allowing us to take part in his experience by sharing his lose of a parent, as well as the funeral rites he gave to his father, and the help provided him by a funeral director.
Sharing a personal grief experience with another is a sacred act, so read as though you are on sacred ground.
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A Photo of Ken's Father.
All alone laying on a table in the middle of a big empty room with only a hospital-like gown covering his body is how I found my father last week when my brother and I went to the Minshall Shropshire-Bleyler funeral home in Brookhaven a few miles southwest of Media, Pennsylvania to dress his body in preparation for the viewing and funeral service two days later.
My father had passed away three days earlier following a four year battle with cancer and Parkinson’s disease. He had taken a bad fall in January and ended up in the hospital with a fractured skull.
After his fall it was all downhill health wise for the poor man. Over the next four months until his death on May 1st he spent at most two, maybe three, weeks at home.
His passing, while sad, provided my father certain relief from his physical ailments and an increasingly frail, feeble existence.
Two days after he passed, I went to the funeral home with my stepmother and siblings to finalize arrangements for my father’s funeral and burial. Mike Okon, the funeral director, met us at the door, welcomed us, expressed sorrow for our loss and ushered us into the funeral home’s spacious conference room.
Mike sat patiently for an hour as my stepmother and I hammered out the wording of my father’s obituary and then reviewed the details of the itemized invoice line by line with her to ensure she understood and agreed with each of the several charges. At the end of the session Mike walked our family to the door remembering each of our names as he said goodbye.
Two days later my brother and I returned to the funeral home to dress my father. Dressing a body is not something one does every day but in our religious tradition men dress deceased males and women do the same for their departed sisters. Usually someone from the deceased person congregation is designated to dress the corpse but in my father’s case, my step mother assigned the task to my older brother Chuck and I.
While Chuck and I have been members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) since my parents joined the church in the late 1950’s, neither of us had much experience dressing a body. Chuck had never done it and I had only done it once, a few years back at the Wilde Funeral Home in Parkesburg under the watchful and ever helpful guidance of Bud Wilde.
Mike ushered us into the room where my Father’s body lay and turned to leave. Quickly, before he reached the door, I summoned Mike back and asked him to stay and assist us. He informed us he had never dressed a Mormon for burial and wasn’t sure how he could help.
Over the next hour Mike demonstrated all the attributes of the true professional. As my brother and I slipped slacks and a shirt, both white, over my father’s lifeless limbs, Mike showed us how to shift my father’s weight to position the clothes on his body. Once the shirt was buttoned, Mike tied the tie, also white, and slipped it over my Father’s head and under his shirt collar, tightening it perfectly around his neck.
Chuck placed socks and shoes, also white, on my father’s feet. Using tricks of his trade Mike filled out my father’s clothing to mask the weight dad had lost in the months leading up to his death. Finally, as Chuck and I placed the robes sacred to our faith over my father’s shoulders and around his waist, Mike made sure every crease and fold laid flat.
Thanks to Mike’s master’s touch in the hour it took to dress him, my father’s body was transformed from a lifeless corpse to a man ready to meet his maker.
A tranquil experience my brother and I won’t soon forget made possible by a consummate professional funeral director.
