Daddy's Girl

My father passed away last week. It was St. Paddy's Day and I found it ironic, since my mom is the one who's Irish. Aside from my grandparents, I've never experienced a death in the family and I wondered how I'd do.
Would I embarass the rest of the family by sobbing uncontrollably, drowning out the service? Thankfully, I didn't, though it was a near thing. I'd done my uncontrollable sobbing in private. My family are very private and I'm glad I did them proud.
I mainly kept it together by watching out for my mother, who was so graceful and loving; by watching out for my oldest sister, who has had the bulk of caring for my folks for the past few years; by watching out for my nieces and nephews, who were blessed by having known my dad for so many years, experiencing the first loss in their young lives; by watching out for my son, who had to shoulder the responsibility of watching out for me.
At the service, grandkids read passages from the Bible and sang, a dear foster brother read Alexander Pope, a dear uncle played "Claire de Lune", a favorite of my mother's. All in all, it was a beautiful service.
I had gathered together some photos of my dad...some from his younger years gleaned from my aunt's album, some from my mom's albums, some from my own paltry photography. There are so many of Daddy holding infants and smiling and making funny faces. (What is it about babies that makes us all clowns...grimacing and grinning in turn?) In all those photos, the babies are all grinning and making faces back at him. Then there are the innumerable photos of Daddy reading to grandbabies, usually "T'was the Night Before Christmas", a Christmas Eve tradition.
My dad gloried in babies. Although I don't have a photo of the event, I have a treasured mental image of him making faces and grinning at my son through the nursery window. He just happened to be in town when I went into labor and was there for the first day of my son's life. Daddy had a great grin, especially for grandbabies. Let that be his legacy.

I'm sure that, while my mother might have been slightly disappointed that I wasn't the boy she wanted to give him, my being a girl was just fine with Daddy. In fact, it was more than fine. He saw me as a gift from God and if God seemed to think that Daddy needed another daughter, that was peachy with him.
When I was young, my father "supply" preached at numerous small country churches. Although his main job was educating and inspiring young college students, many of whom went on to preach and do mission work, he wanted to keep his hand in at the pulpit. So he would go preach at churches where the minister was sick or on vacation or called to another church. He frequently was paid in home-canned vegetables and bushels of potatoes. We kept chickens for a while and I think they may have been payment for a Sunday sermon.
His preaching style wasn't pounding-the-pulpit-hellfire-and-brimstone. Instead, he instructed and interpreted. When he died, we found his Bible, open to the last passage he'd studied, on his bedside table. Beside it, we found his Greek New Testament, open to the same passage. Always the scholar. Let that be his legacy.
I watched my mother out of the corner of my eye during the service. At first, she seemed to be not quite there, staring at the floor. Then I realized that she was very much there. She was seeing Infinity, communing with Daddy. She mouthed the words to all the hymns, all the familiar passages being read, knowing deep in her soul all the words.
They were married for almost 66 years and all of us wonder how she could possibly live on without him. They would sometimes embarrass us, being all in love when "old" people aren't supposed to be. Let that be his legacy.
They not only raised all of us (and we all turned out pretty good)...they parented a wide variety of others. The 16-year-old friend of my sister whose own father would call her to come bail him out of jail. The freshmen he counseled in their studies and in their homesickness. The foreign students he invited home to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. The couple from Southern Rhodesia who rocked our church by wanting to join our all-white congregation, becoming regulars at our Sunday table. Let that be his legacy.
Bums and homeless people seemed to read him for a sucker and panhandled him frequently. Daddy used to get a $5 allowance from Mom for his lunch money for the week. If a bum asked for a hand-out, Daddy would steer him to the nearest coffee shop, give the waitress his $5 and tell her that she should serve him whatever he wanted, as much as he wanted. In the 1950's, $5 could buy a feast.
Mother used to say that they couldn't go anywhere in the world without running into a former student and, indeed, they once ran into a former student while walking down a London street. Daddy always said that when he met them, he could look in the grade book of his mind and remember their names, where they sat in class and, most importantly, what their final grade was. Let that be his legacy.
Daddy's favorite writer was C. S. Lewis. He and Lewis both seemed to think that one's faith should be based on study, logic, and intelligent thought. In that respect, he was as much a philosopher as theologian. He introduced one of his students to Lewis in the 1950's and the student showed his gratitude by sending us kids copies of the Chronicles of Narnia, long before they were available in American publishing houses.
In fact, Narnia was my naptime reading. We always lived a block away from campus so Daddy could walk to and from work. He always came home for lunch and after lunch, he would read me to sleep. He'd take a 10-minute nap then. He invented power napping, I think, because he could wake up and be ready for his afternoon classes. He always awoke at 5:30 a.m., without an alarm. He'd make coffee and bring it to my mom in bed. I used to ask her how she'd trained him so well. Let that be his legacy.
Daddy was a wonderful gardener. He used to say that he liked gardening because you could always learn more. He liked learning more than anything. I remember well the first time I learned what a weed was.
I had gotten up early, before the heat of the day, to help him in the garden. I was about 6. He showed me what a carrot plant looks like and told me to pull everything in that row which didn't look like a carrot. ("Which of these things is not like the others? Which of these things is not the same?"...it was Daddy's version of Sesame Street.)
I completed the row and then he showed me a row of green onions and told me to pull everything that didn't look like an onion. About half way down the row, I saw a carrot. I was so scared. I thought he'd be mad because I'd messed up. What if I had pulled the wrong plants in the previous row? He patiently explained to me that a weed is just a plant out of place. He was good at explaining things. Let that be his legacy.
I'm named for both my parents. Carl and Rozelle transmogrified to Charlotte Rose. I'm the third Rose, actually. My Irish grandmother was named Rosanna. Daddy's nickname for me was Rosebud, a bud of his beloved Rozelle.
In later years, although we always saw their abiding love for each other, he seemed to tell her even more frequently that he loved her. And while, as a widow, he was her second husband, she always said that he was never second in her heart. We should all be so lucky to have that kind of love in our lives. Let that be his legacy, that he loved our mother past all understanding.
I used to think that I was Daddy's favorite. Until in my teen years, when I discovered that all my siblings thought they were Daddy's favorite too. In the wisdom of his parenting, he made us all feel special and important to him. Let that be his legacy.
Daddy had a Swiss Army knife, which we found in his room. I think he actually bought it in Switzerland, on one of his many trips. He traveled every continent, except Australia and Antarctica. He loved seeing the world and experiencing new cultures and old ruins. I think if he hadn't been a theological scholar, he would have been a history professor. But always teaching.
I gave my oldest son the Swiss Army knife. He said he remembered Daddy using it to cut flowers, to harvest vegetables. He opened the saw blade and, lo and behold, there was still garden dirt on the blade. Let that be his legacy.