Category Archives: Memories of Daddy

My favorite picture of daddy, in his heyday, tending his garden

This week I was lamenting to the owner of our local fruit farm after I learned that our late frost this spring stole nearly 80% of their fruit crop. “I’m so sorry you lost so much of your crop,” I commented. “I knew this spring would be hard on your trees.”

Her response shocked me: “At least we got some. We are pretty happy about that!”

Wow. 80% of their livelihood stolen by the frost, and she audaciously claims happiness.

This got me thinking about perspective and something my Daddy always used to say: “We’ll take what the Lord gives us.” He said this most often in the context of his garden, but he also said it about a host of other circumstances that life dealt us.

As I have taken on my first larger garden this year, this perspective has shaped my outlook, too. Gardening is really an act of faith. I put a seed in the ground. I tend it. I water it. I keep the weeds away. And I hope that God makes it grow to give us plenty of fruit. It’s not terribly difficult to look on my smallish garden this way, but I was pretty astonished that my local fruit farmer could maintain such a positive perspective about 80% of her livelihood!

We’ll take what the Lord gives us. It’s a posture that acknowledges his ultimate control over every detail of our lives. And it postures us correctly for gratitude, that what he has chosen to give us is, ultimately, for the greatest good.

Not everything that we are dealt in life is easy to be grateful for. I confess I am not often grateful for my father’s dementia. I am not grateful for a pandemic that has stolen what little time in his memory I maintain. I have seen him only once since the outbreak began in March. I’m so grateful for that visit though because it gave me glimpse of God’s continued goodness, even in the midst of difficult circumstances. Because although dementia has taken him from my life and from the lives of my children in the way that I wish he could be there, it has also placed him somewhere else, somewhere that God knew he needed to be. As we visited with him and his nurse aid back in July, I realized that even though his mind his dimming, his light for Jesus is not. His nurse knows about the day he met Jesus and his journey with the Lord ever since. He has shared Jesus (on repeat, I’m sure) with many of the people who now care for him. I have to trust that this, too, is part of God’s good plan to redeem every circumstance in our lives. It doesn’t mean I don’t grieve our losses, but I can rejoice and be happy in what God is still doing.

We’ll take what the Lord gives us. We trust that he is good. We can choose a grateful perspective. What circumstances are you struggling with right now? Where is it hard to see God’s goodness? Instead of looking at the losses you’re experiencing, where can you see God’s loving hand still forming goodness? God cannot NOT be good, and he is always actively working to redeem every situation in your life and mine for the greatest good. I encourage you to choose a grateful perspective today. To audaciously claim joy in the midst of all your difficulties. To take what the Lord has given you and to say thank you.

My Daddy is a day away from a move that he is totally unaware of. He is in advanced stages of dementia and is shortly moving to a nursing home to receive full time care. It has been difficult for my mind to even process this. Mostly it feels like an out of body experience. I live a couple of hours away from my parents, so it’s not part of my daily experience to see his dementia. When we are together, he tends to do well because he enjoys the company, even if he’s not always sure who we are. Daddy has always enjoyed life. I remember so many times he claimed to be a child stuck in a man’s body. Not far from the truth. He played often, told corny jokes, and never sat on the sidelines of life. He was a hands-on dad. Engaged.

This week all that he means to me and all that I’m losing hit me squarely between the eyes when my two year old came out of the kitchen wearing the rubber gloves he keeps at my house. She exclaimed happily, “Papa’s gloves!” Tears immediately filled my eyes as I helped her put her chubby fists deeper into the giant blue and yellow gloves that dwarfed her hands. His rubber gloves. Every time my parents would visit us, my dad would insist on washing the dinner dishes, and any other dishes left over from the day, for that matter. He always had to serve us in that way, even feigning offense if we tried to dissuade him. Like me, he prefers to wear gloves when washing dishes, so he purchased a pair years ago to leave at my house so that he’d be prepared to wash any time he came. He has always been the family “dishwasher,” even when I was at home, insisting on serving my mom by cleaning the dishes after she had cooked a meal for the family. Whenever I have lamented not having an electronic dishwasher, or my mother before me, he would say, “What do you need that for when you’ve got me?”

Funny how such a simple thing  as rubber gloves can set off the deepest emotional response. Partly the tears came because, even at two, Hannah knows whose gloves they are — evidence of the bond she already shares with him, and of his importance in our family. How I wish that she would experience the version of him that I know. These gloves remind me of all that we’ve lost to dementia. That Daddy has probably visited my house for the last time. That the gloves will be empty. That he is forgetting his grandchildren, and that they will never know the version of him that I hold so dear. That he knows me less and less each time he sees me. The thief of dementia. I miss the heart of the hands that once filled those gloves.

Whenever I slip on my gloves to serve my family, I am aware of the legacy he created, the servant’s heart he and my mom both shared with me and my brother, which we now have the opportunity to walk out. Though his yellow and blue gloves are too big for me to ever fill with my feminine hands, I know that through my heart, I fill them as I serve my family and my Savior.

Like Daddy, I won’t sit on the sidelines of life. He taught me by his example how to engage, to take action, to love, how to seize the opportunity, to fully live. During times of sadness such as this, it is easy to want to check out, to go numb so that you don’t have to feel the pain of your experience. But that’s not what Daddy would do and it’s not what he would want me to do. When my mom got cancer many years ago, I can still remember my Daddy sitting in his recliner, in the same position it sits tonight, calling each one of his closest friends, and through his tears, telling them the news. He never held back. Always engaged.

This week happens to be VBS for me, so I’m doing it with all my heart. For Daddy, and for the Savior he lead me to as a child. Daddy loved nothing more than spreading the love of Jesus to others, especially young people. That’s an opportunity that must be seized every single today we have, no matter what else is fighting to distract us. That’s what Daddy would do.

I’ve been singing this over and over again….

Mornings like this take me back. There’s a light frost, and the air is chilly, but as the sun peeks out, I know it will be a warm day. As I’m getting ready for my day, brushing my teeth, combing my hair, putting on my make up, my mind is 100 miles away.

I’m in Mansfield, in a small grove of maple trees outside my best friend’s house. It’s cool in the woods, but the afternoon sun above the canopy of trees is warm. The night was chilly, the morning saw a light frost. But by afternoon we’d shed our jackets and felt the warm sun on our skin as we played outside. We’d run with the energy of the coming spring, knowing that the cold days of winter were now numbered.

After work, on these days of my memory, Daddy would come pick me up in his gray Honda hatchback. I would know our destination with one glimpse into the trunk. It would be full of industrial sized mayonnaise jars, empty, of course, awaiting sap. We’d drive the few minutes from home to that grove of trees and gather the sap. I’m sure I wasn’t as helpful as I remember, because I couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6 when I remember helping Daddy with the sap. I have a 6 year old, and I know exactly how helpful she would be in this task! But I never remember Daddy getting frustrated, just a happy camaraderie as we went around to check our gray metal buckets to see how much sap we’d collected. We poured it into the mayo jars and tallied up our cache. Only a couple of gallons on a slow day. But some days the 3 gallon buckets would be full to overflowing. Days like today, where the morning was chilly, but the sun soon brought warmth. The sap would start to flow. We haven’t collected sap in well over 20 years, but this type of day never fails to take me right back to those maple trees.

I felt special when I got to collect sap with Daddy. He’s always had a way of making me feel special. I hope that I have that way about me, as I’m like him in many ways. I hope that I can live in the moment with my kids and create special memories that they will cherish on cool spring mornings. I’m sure that my daddy was stressed just like me, just like every other adult on this planet, and I’m sure at times he let that out in ways he shouldn’t have, but I rarely remember him giving in to that stress. I know he did, because he remembers (or used to) and used to talk about it, feeling like he had made mistakes. That gives me a lot of hope. Because I feel that way about myself a lot, like I’m going to mess my kids up with all my mistakes. But I don’t really remember his mistakes. I just remember collecting sap with my daddy. I remember him pouring in to me, just like that sap poured into those buckets, just like I want to pour into my own kids now.

A portion of an article published in the local newspaper about my daddy’s sapping, circa 1986. I remember that hat vividly.