Dad's Eulogy

Nearly a decade ago I spoke at Don's mom's funeral, a woman we lovingly called Honey Bunny. This weekend I sent my dad out in a similar fashion.

Here are my words:

Hi, I’m Jacquelyn, Dawn and John’s oldest child. I’m going to share a few words about Dad.

When these first thoughts flew into my head, he was still very much alive. The next day he began a sudden 24-hour decline.

But I didn’t know that on Monday night when I started to write this up as a blogpost.

All I knew was I was in Maine on my first church mission trip. Instead of hearing God’s voice, I kept hearing my dad’s. I want to share a few of those dad-isms with you today.

Dad’s voice was crystal clear as we waited an hour until we were given our orders for the day. In my head he said it's the hurry up and wait game. 

Yup, dad, hurry up and wait. We had to rouse at 6:30 am to have breakfast at 7:15 am to meet in the lobby at 8:45 am to be at the church at 9 am. We thought we were driving someplace, only to find out our half of the group was to stay put and pull weeds and scrape paint. The other half drove to a different site to do carpentry and install cabinets.

The next time Dad reached out to me was as I was pulling those weeds -- a task I procrastinate for as long as possible at home. But a task dad used to do regularly. I could hear him say: make sure you get the roots.

On the other side of the property, I was moved to the scraping paint part of the project. I was reminded that each summer, growing up in Paramus, dad scraped the paint on the wood siding to prep it for its annual paint job. One of the 300 pictures in the slide show is of my dad scraping paint or painting the house in Paramus. Trust me, he did it a lot more often than the pictures indicate, but he lived many decades in the pre-digital era when film was precious, or, conversely, we had one or two pictures we had to take before the roll could be developed. I see you nodding, most of you remember those days. I suspect the painting and yard work pictures fell in the category of finishing up the roll.

Anyway, the side of the house that saw the most sun was painted annually. The other three sides were painted on a rotating basis. Or so I remember.

I do not remember him ever inviting us to join him to scrape the house -- a skill at that moment in Maine I wished he had imparted. We live in a house with aluminum siding that never needs to be scraped. 

Before I even left for Maine, he said don't forget your poncho. It was always poncho, never raincoat or umbrella. I commented there was no rain in the forecast. He said it will rain. Wouldn't you know it, it rained and my poncho was back in my room! 

~~~

As I sit in my office with the window open on what my dad would call a top ten day, planning to have some sippy and cookies in a few minutes, more dad-isms bounce around my head:

On a long highway drive, get behind a truck and let him lead the pace. Advice I disagree with ever since I saw a tire break on an 18-wheeler I was behind just moments earlier. I was grateful I had changed lanes, but I still heard the advice as I drove home early to be with family.

Always bring a book, because you don't know how long mom will be (or how long you'll have to wait). Advice I remembered yesterday when waiting at DMV.

The GPS also channeled my dad on the long drive home. As I paid the first toll on the Garden State Parkway it asked, “do you want a faster route with tolls?” For whatever reason I agreed, even though I doubted it would be easier or even faster.

The GPS directed me to Exit 163, the Route 17 to Route 4 exit through backroads in Paramus to Route 80 to the New Jersey Turnpike.

In other words: through the neighborhood where our parents raised us, past the airport where he worked for four decades, past the neighborhood where Dad grew up, past the neighborhood where he lived as a newlywed, to the commute he had the last couple of years he worked at Teterboro Airport. I had already passed a train in New York (albeit a commuter train and not a freight train) and was now driving under the jets at Newark Airport on the way to the home my parents have shared for the past two decades.

It was the This is Your Life, John Koetting drive.

Tomorrow you are all invited to our house, and to their house on Sunday, to share more dad-isms and more stories. Thank you for being here today, either in person or online.

~~~

Aunt Barbara, dad's baby sister, and Ashley, Dad's eldest granddaughter, also spoke. Barbara was tasked with talking about her brother growing up, and Ashley was to speak about Dad as a grandfather, as Papa John, or simply Papa. I was to cover him as a dad.

Barbara mentioned Dad was a dreamer throughout school, and she has his report card filled with C's and D's to prove it. This prompted me to add one last Dad-ism. I looked at Ashley and said, you know this one: Study hard and get good grades. 

The service is visible on the Allentown Presbyterian Church YouTube page.

The slide show of images can be found here.