Saying Goodbye

Today I am beginning my new job in test development. I was supposed to begin last Monday, but events of the past week have shown me that despite the best of plans, one never knows what’s going to happen.

Around 4:00 in the afternoon on Sunday, June 12, I received a frantic phone call from my mother. She was screaming, “Help! Help!” into the phone and I also thought I heard her say, “He’s dead!” but I couldn’t tell for certain. I was afraid that she has been in a car accident and was in a ditch somewhere. It was then that a man took the phone from her and, after asking who I was, informed me that my father had passed away. I was in complete shock! He had turned 60 just six days before that and, while he did take medication for his blood pressure, he was fairly healthy. For goodness sake, he had ridden his bike on the last 14 or 15 RAGBRAIs! As soon as I got off the phone, my fiancée Mel asked what was going on. She was no doubt scared by my tone of voice and by the look on my face. When I told her, she couldn’t believe it. We threw a bunch of clothes into some bags and headed out from our home in Cedar Rapids to my parents’ house in Waterloo.

During what had to be the longest ride in my life, I called my uncle in Chicago, to give him the bad news. He had a hard time as well believing that his father was dead. He took care of calling others. When we arrived at the house, one of the pastors from church was there with Mom. A few hours later, my sister arrived from the Twin Cities, being driven by my cousin’s husband, John. People kept dropping in all evening. I don’t think anyone in the house slept well that night. Mom couldn’t sleep in her own bed as that was where she found my father after his apparent unexpected heart attack.

On Monday, Mel, my sister, my mother, her sister, and I went to the funeral home to make the arrangements. I thought is would be more difficult, but the hardest part of the three hours that we spent there was being left alone in the room with the caskets. It was then that my mother, my sister, and I finally broke down. We did get through that however.

I thought that I did pretty well on Monday, but I Tuesday, I was just a mess! I just couldn’t keep it together. My mother, on the other hand, did much better. My father, a retired music educator, was well known in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area, as well as in certain circles throughout the state of Iowa as he was in so many organizations; I think we counted 22 organizations when were trying to figure out what to include in the obituary. Because of this, the Waterloo Courier ran an article about him. It included quotes from many music teachers in the area. However, both the article and the death notice had an incorrect time for Thursday’s funeral. We eventually got it corrected.

The visitation Wednesday evening was a lot easier than I thought it would be. The only real difficult time was when we first arrived and we saw my father lying there in the casket. One of the things that made the evening go fairly easily that I was constantly talking to people. We didn’t count all of the names in the guest registry, but there had to be close to 400 people who showed up.

Thursday morning’s funeral was quite beautiful. In the almost-full church, a string quartet made up from local musicians performed. The church choir, with a few ringers from other choirs sang. The part that really got to me though was the performance of the bell choir. My dad had directed the bell choir the past year. Instead of having someone conduct, they draped the director’s stand in black and placed a baton on it. The pastor had a very beautiful sermon that was quite uplifting. The funeral procession on the way to the cemetery was quite long. It was really good to see how many people loved and cared about my father.

The rest of the week was time to get to work. My dad had recently started painting the house. He had just one short wall done, as well as the shed. So, since we had numerous family members there, we used the free labor to get the house painted. We got primer and one coat of paint on most of the house. My mom may see about getting people from church to help out with the remainder of the painting. I may be able to help out next weekend. I’ll probably have to go up there to help my mother with thank you notes for the flowers and memorial gifts we received. We spend an hour opening cards Saturday night and we were only half done.

It’s time for me to finish getting ready for work. Life has to go on, and from realizing how active my father was in life and since we never do know just how much time we have left, I don’t want to waste one minute of it!