My Dad's 105th

My Dad was born 105 years ago today, February 25, 1904, on a farm near Aberdeen, South Dakota.  He died in 1995, not long after I became pastor at OLA.  Longevity genes run on both sides of my family.

Actually, he died of complications of advanced prostate cancer, which was diagnosed at a time when the likelihood was that something else would take him before the cancer did.  No matter what may take me in the end, I'm grateful that I don't have to look forward to that particular way of going.

He was, however, a great example to me not only of patience, both with his own afflictions and the care he gave to my mom in her needs and disabilities, but also of calm aceptance of all the conditions of life.  One example among many: In his mid-seventies, he developed macular degeneration, and soon faced the fact that he, and avid motorist, could no longe drive.  When he willingly gave up his keys and sold the car, there was not one word of complaint.  Whining was not for him.  Instead, he got a seniors/disabled bus pass, and for the very first time in his life boarded a city bus.  Grocery shopping was a three-block walk; anything else he needed, he went by bus.

A few months before he died, actualy two days after my birthday, September 8, 1994, I was listening to Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac" and heard a poem, several words of which described him better than anything I ever heard or could have thought of.  The poem is William Meredith's "His Plans for Old Age," and the lines are:

... he is working on his ways

so that when he becomes set in them

as old people must, ...

his ways will have grace.

(The full text of the poem is unfortunately no longer online, probably for copyright reasons.)

I'm sure he never heard those words, and they probably would not have meant much to him if he had, certainly not as much as they mean to me.  In fact, the whole poem itself doesn't really apply nearly as much as these words taken out of context.  I think I'm so impressed with them because, more than anything, they express what of him that I am striving to live up to.  

As I experienced in him, I have no choice whether or not I will be set in my ways; my only real choice is what kind of ways I'll be set in.

His own taste in poetry ran more to what I guess we'd call doggerel.  One of his favorite was on a cheap plaque that was hanging in the kitchen:

Well, Dad, I guess it's no longer a dream . . .