Anatomy of a Story

 Love is picking my emergency contact

(without Hesitation)

Spring semester of my freshman year in college, I spent a week in Chicago. This was one of my first solo trips.

I boarded the bus in Detroit, ready for a 6-hour ride to the stop in Chicago, where another student would pick me up and drive me the rest of the way to campus.

Two hours or so out from Chicago, my ride bailed. Cue panic.

I didn’t have a smart phone or cash for a taxi, and I knew nothing about public transit. Clueless about what to do and terrified out of my mind, I did what I always do when I’m in an urgent situation like this.

I called Dad. And like always, Dad came up with a solution.

I walked two miles with a heavy suitcase and a pillow while my dad directed me through the streets, over the phone, from his desk at work. Thank God for Google Maps.

Dad has always been my first call in an emergency, because he always comes through with a way to solve the crisis.

Three months ago, my dad died. He’ll never answer the phone again.

—

Growing up, I was taught a lot of definitions of love. I heard that love is a verb, and action word. Love is a choice and not an emotion. I sat through sermons on 1 Corinthians 13 and discussed which of the five love languages is mine.

I learned a lot about love in theory, but in reality, love is not always so obvious or clean cut.

When it comes to my parents, I find it’s easiest to identify their flaws. I’m sure many people can relate to this. It’s easier to see what isn’t there than to recognize what is, especially since I’ve never been without it.

My dad wasn’t a perfect human, nor was he a perfect dad. But regardless of what my dramatic high school self thought, I wouldn’t trade him for a thousand perfect dads.

(I would give up so much just to hear him laugh again.)

Dad struggled with emotions. He tried, but conversations of that nature were primarily awkward and not usually helpful.

I say usually, because I have a vivid memory of a time that Dad showed incredible emotional awareness and helped me find a way to deal with my stress.

My first semester of college I was taking online classes, working three days a week, and interning with our youth pastor. On top of that, my best friend left the state for college, and I was definitely lonely.

One night I argued with my mom about a laundry basket (it wasn’t actually about the laundry basket). I ended up yelling and in tears and just miserable.

My dad was there for the whole argument, but he didn’t say anything until the end. He sat me down and gave me a hug, and that’s the last time I can recall sitting on his lap.

“I think you might be doing too much,” he told me. “What can you eliminate so you’re not as stressed?”

This took me by surprise, because it hadn’t occurred to me that there could be something else contributing to my turbulent emotions. We talked through it and I ended up reducing my work hours.

I like to think I’ll remember this moment until the day I die.

But these kinds of conversations with Dad were rare, because the parenting he excelled at was much more practical and hands on.

It’s taken me a long time to recognize how much he loved me and how much I needed his kind of loving.

(I wish I could tell him that I know now how much time and energy he dedicated to his children. I want him to know how his actions have shaped me in a myriad of ways. But these realizations have come too late.)

—

As I grew up and began to see my parents as the imperfect people we all are, I was disappointed that my dad couldn’t meet all my emotional needs.

It’s embarrassing to admit, but sometimes I thought of my dad like a Golden Retriever—someone with a big heart who does his best, but maybe doesn’t bring as much to the table as somebody else.

In some ways I didn’t take my dad seriously, because I didn’t have to. His consistency and dependability made him a fact of life I never questioned.

The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Dad is Dad. He was always there.

I could see the way he showed me love in practical ways, by coaching my soccer team and teaching me how to sweep with different types of brooms. I felt grateful, but sort of dismissed it as Dad doing his best, not realizing what life would be like without it.

Even as I left home for college and then moved across the country to Oregon, I couldn’t imagine a life without Dad.

Sometimes I think I’ll wake up and this will all be over, that somehow a dad died but my dad will still be there, telling a cheesy joke and making us roll our eyes.

His sense of humor stayed strong even as his body shut down.

Now I have a Dad-shaped hole in my life, tearing a wound that will never fully heal. This grief is like your chair suddenly collapsing beneath you, or the rope in a game of tug of war unexpectedly snapping.

You lean on it in full confidence that it will support you, and it’s only when that support disappears that you realize how much you depended on it.

—

The Thursday before Dad’s funeral, my family (my siblings and my mom—as complete as it will ever be now) gathered around the kitchen at midnight, trying to summarize my dad and his life in a two-page eulogy.

It’s only at that moment I found the words to describe my dad’s priorities as a parent.

He was preparing us for life, teaching us how to be self-sufficient and figure out problems on our own.

From everything I remember of growing up with my dad, he took every opportunity to explain how and why he did things. It’s true that some of those lessons didn’t stick as well, and that for all Dad’s teaching I still don’t know north from south or read a map, but I believe Dad has influenced more of my choices than even I realize.

I may consider my oldest sister my financial adviser, but it started with Dad. Even from a very young age, I learned to divide my allowance between spending, God, and savings. (That savings lived in my dad’s top dresser drawer, in the same envelope, for years. I can still picture the way he wrote “Deb” on it.)

One of Dad’s favorite sayings when it came to money was having “skin in the game.” Even if he could have afforded it, he never would have paid for our college in full or bought our first cars. He wanted us to understand responsibility when it came to our financial decisions.

In the same way, he didn’t consider us adults until we were fully independent from him and mom. (In a less serious way, he frequently told us that we couldn’t date until we turned 35. I always responded that he married Mom before he was 35, and he would make that his proof, saying he wasn’t ready to get married.)

Dad’s approach to vehicles reflected his mindset on money. As in, use it until it’s falling apart and don’t pay a mechanic to do what you can do yourself. There’s been many times that I’ve definitely used the convenience of a mechanic, but I’ve also done many minor repairs on my car myself.

I have a set of car tools that Dad bought me when I moved to Oregon. Almost every time I used them, I would text Dad so he would be proud of me.

My first vehicle was a 2003 Ford Escape that required a good amount of repairs from the previous owner’s collision with a deer. My dad and I worked on that together, going to a junk yard for parts and finding creative ways to re-shape the frame. YouTube was particularly handy for this project.

In fact, YouTube was my dad’s favorite resource when it came to figuring out how to fix something. When he didn’t know how to do something, he learned how, which is a lesson he passed on to us kids. He had a clear understanding of his own abilities though, and never attempted a project out of his skill set.

Fixing cars was just one practical skill he specifically taught me. There is a long list of things I could name, like mowing the lawn and wrapping a gift with three pieces of tape.

I learned how to paint walls while I worked on houses with him that he planned to flip and sell or rent. The summer after my college graduation I helped him with one particular house; I painted most of it, but I also helped install cabinets and drywall, replace electrical outlets, and scrub nicotine off the walls.

(My dad’s favorite cleaning product was Totally Awesome cleaner. If I was ever tempted to smoke, the streaks from spraying cleaner on the walls definitely killed it.)

I think the most important lesson my dad taught me was how to have confidence in my own abilities, whether it’s something I know or something I can figure out, probably with YouTube.

Looking back, all these teaching lessons were also time spent with Dad. Despite the miserable heat and hard labor, I have fond memories of working on that house with Dad, chatting throughout the day. I can even remember exactly when he taught me to wrap a present, hiding in his and Mom’s room with the set of Corelle dishes he bought as Mom’s Christmas gift.

Dad may not have been good with emotions, but the way he expressed his love was just as valuable and needed.

There’s a song that I heard years ago and never listened to again because it was so heartbreaking. It popped into my head while I sat in my office, telling my dad goodbye over the phone and hoping he could hear me. It lived there during the week leading up to his funeral, and even as I closed the Herse door.

I cry every time I listen to it now, because it hits so close to home and articulates exactly how I felt the day he died. I imagine it’s just as personal for the singer, Patricia Maguire:

“You can let go now, daddy
You can let go
Oh, I think I'm ready
To do this on my own

It still feels a little bit scary
But I want you to know
I'll be ok now, daddy
You can let go”

—

My dad was a rock, a steadfast presence that never seemed to waver. Even his personality was consistent, always ready with a smile and a joke, willing to talk to anyone. The phrase “never met a stranger” must have been coined specifically for Dad.

He was a hard worker, dedicated to his job and family and always ready to help anyone who needed it.

For me, he was a place of safety. His height and long arms made for the best hugs and his large hands enveloped mine. (Even now that I’m fully grown, his pinky finger was as wide as my thumb.)

Even though he sometimes came across as someone who never took things seriously, there were many times over the years that I was surprised at how intentional his actions and choices were.

He told me once that he chose my name (and my siblings’) while keeping in mind that I might be a lawyer or a doctor someday. When I became an adult, we sometimes compared planners and different life strategies.

(He was a problem solver, and I don’t know if it was nature or nurture that made me one too. I don’t think it matters.)

My dad generally used humor as a coping mechanism, which one reason he could sometimes appear flippant. But there’s a couple of occasions I recall that he couldn’t hold back the tears.

When my oldest sister graduated high school, he was a mess.

And he cried when he left me in Portland.

I knew that neither of my parents were happy about me moving across the country after college, but my dad was more vocal about it. He never really tried to stop me though, just as he always encouraged us to make our own choices. In fact, when I determined that I would road trip to Oregon he decided to go with me.

At first, I didn’t want him to, because I was feeling the approach of real independence and freedom (this was before I had to pay rent). But in the end, I’m extremely glad Dad took that journey, and not only because I didn’t have phone signal and had to rely on his ability to read a map.

I have so many precious memories from those five days driving west. We chose to make it a vacation instead of getting there as fast as possible, and I have so many photos of me and Dad in the South Dakota Badlands, Mt Rushmore, Yellowstone, and so many other places.

Strangely, the times I loved the most were gas stops. We had a routine; I would put the gas in the car and Dad would go inside and get us both coffee. I remember this one Sinclair gas station we stopped at. It was super windy, and it was the first time we both encountered 85-rated gas (for high elevations). We actually took pictures there.

In hindsight, I can’t decide if I should be surprised that I didn’t expect Dad to cry when he left, or if it makes perfect sense for my experience with his usual steady attitude.

—

During my dad’s last week, I was the only one who could consistently get a response from him. It was sometimes a smile and sometimes his eyebrows wiggling.

The middle child in me felt vindicated.

But in hindsight, I wonder what he was really feeling. He couldn’t possibly be as cheerful as he showed himself to be. Even until the end, he was a steady presence that grounded me whenever he was awake enough to interact.

Despite the grief that accompanied me, I cherish the memories of that last week, when my whole family gathered in the family room eating and sleeping like cats. For all that we shed many tears, we also shared laughter.

Before Dad left the hospital the last time, we even sang all the silly songs we could think of to him.

We all took turns holding his hand and only letting go when we went to bed. I’m pretty sure that this was the longest amount of time my whole family spent together in years. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever felt as close with them as I did during this time.

My future sister-in-law was able to stay with us too and it made the family feel complete. I’m glad we had that week together because we will never be whole again.

I even took the chance to buy him one last dad joke T-shirt (Hi hungry, I’m Dad).

He wore that to his funeral.

With all the unknowns facing us, I returned to Portland over the weekend. I’ve been told that after I left Dad didn’t really open his eyes again. I don’t think I can say I made the wrong choice, because it was the best one I could make at the time. But sometimes I wonder how things would have been different if I didn’t leave.

That Sunday night I stayed on Facetime with my family the whole night. Nobody slept very much. I listened to the wheezing sound of my dad’s breathing and couldn’t decide if it was a relief to hear in the morning or agony because of how much it hurt to listen to.

—

Grief is funny sometimes. The regret I feel isn’t really about what I did or did not do, it’s about what I can’t do anymore.

I can’t hug him again (my last proper hug was a hurried one when they dropped me off at the airport in January).

I can’t tell him I love him again (I whispered it to him at 3am the Friday before he died as I left to return to Portland. I don’t think he heard me.)

I wasn’t there when he died. I was on a plane, waiting desperately for the WIFI to connect so I could receive messages.

Anyone would think that day was nothing but misery, but strangely, it wasn’t. Because as I sobbed on the plane, the other woman in my row rubbed my back in comfort. She didn’t ask anything, and I didn’t say anything.

Because it was a rare clear night, and I could see the city lights as we passed over Chicago and Lake Michigan. The stars were in full view and the world felt incredibly peaceful.

Because my uncle came to pick me up from the airport at 1am when he couldn’t handle being with my dad as he died.

Because the man from the funeral home told my mom that he would take care of Dad and keep him warm.

“Tonight, he’s my brother.”

Because my best friend dropped everything to fly from California for the funeral just because I said months ago that I wanted her there.

Because my family is writing over 150 thank you notes for all the people who showed up to the visitation and funeral or volunteered their time and skills and money to help us.

I’d known in theory that a funeral could be very telling about who a person is, but to experience it myself was something else entirely.

I never knew just how many people loved my dad.

My mom had too many potential pallbearers to choose from, and we had to narrow down our list of who to ask to speak at the funeral. One of my dad’s close friends delayed his trip to meet his new granddaughter just so he could be there and share his own stories of Dad.

My uncle, someone we fully expected to turn down the offer to speak, stood onstage and recounted his memories through tears.

Old friends my dad hadn’t seen in years and even people he met because of business showed up. Three different real estate groups sent flowers.

For all that us kids would describe my dad as kind of socially awkward, there were so many people who called him friend.

I am still in awe at the outpouring of support we received from our community. It was one of the most comforting things I experienced that week.

—

What is love?

Love is the scratchy feeling of my dad’s coat when he carried me to the car as a child.

Love is listening to my dad try and sing Christmas carols with the family every year and laughing until I can’t breathe.

Love is knowing that if I need to get somewhere early my dad will always be available.

Love is sharing Tim Hortons coffee with Dad because no one else in the family will drink it.

Love is riding in the car with dad and listening to his favorite Christian contemporary music radio station.

Love is the laugh lines around my dad’s eyes from the uncountable times he’s smiled.

Love is the rumble of my dad’s voice when I lay my ear on his chest.

Love is teaching myself to raise one eyebrow so I could show off to Dad.

Love is so much more than I can list, even if I were to fill the pages of a novel.

I can’t define it. All I can do is experience it.