Saying Goodbye to Dad

It was a cold, rainy Saturday in November, and Ruth and I had just returned from a walk and a run at Champoeg State Park. The temperature was cool and it was a bit damp, but the run along the trail was picturesque and pleasant. When we got home, I received the phone call I was not looking forward to – my father had entered the final stages of life. He had been struggling with dementia, and the disease, which had captured his mind, had finally taken the rest of his body.  He had developed a virus that migrated into pneumonia, and now it was just a matter of time. 

Of both my immediate and extended family we are the only ones that have moved far from our home in Arizona. It is in times like these that we wished we were closer to family, as the burden of my Dad’s illness has fallen on my mother, my brother and my sister. They have done a wonderful job of visiting my father and making him feel both comfortable and valued. Ruth and I have traveled about once a month to visit my Dad, and the last visit was one of the best. He did not recognize me as a son, but our conversation was pleasant and he was engaged. 

The question now was, “When to go?” The hospice nurse knew only that it would be a matter of days. It was Thanksgiving week and we still had events on campus; in fact, I was responsible for the chapel service on Tuesday. In my mind, I planned on going on Friday following Thanksgiving and spending the weekend, but my Dad grew worse and it did not appear to my mother that he would last that long. I bought a ticket to leave after I spoke in chapel, but one board member encouraged me to just go. Leaning into his advice, the Lord just seemed to be saying “go.” I called vice president for student life, Brad Lau, and asked that the team cover the chapel. My next call was to Alaska, which was gracious enough to get me on the first flight on Tuesday to Phoenix.

In the northwest corner of the Phoenix area, there is a home that houses people with dementia and other diseases that make it impossible to care for them at home. The staff does its best to carry the strain of people who have lost a sense of themselves and have diseases that will soon lead to death. The home is in very nice condition, and the people serve well. My father’s room is just on the left as you enter the front door. It is a bedroom much like that in any home – with its own bathroom. When I arrived at 11 a.m., the hospice nurse was there and was talking with my mother; she was working to make sure Dad was comfortable and not in any pain. It is a matter of time now. She did not know how long; we just had to wait. The vigil had begun. 

I joined my mom, sister and brother sitting at his bed and watching him. I remember him as a leader – strong, powerful, convincing. Now he lays in a bed barely able to move. He is receiving oxygen to make his breathing easier as the pneumonia is filling his lungs. His breathing is labored and his face is expressive at times, but his eyes do not open. He is wearing his Flagstaff High School girls’ championship T-shirt from 1992, which brings back memories of great victories and screaming crowds cheering for the Eagles to win another game. The crowds are all gone, but the trophies remain as memories of glories long past. 

We sit for hours. Each of us deals with the coming death in his or her own way. My Mom sings hymns and tells stories. My brother Keith listens and holds his hand by the bedside. My sister Deanna plays the music of Harry Belafonte – the music of calypso, which was one of my Dad’s favorites. And how did I handle my Dad’s dying? I have more of a tendency to process my thoughts internally. I listened carefully and watched his breathing as his chest labored to take in air. While the nurse was there she used a soft sponge to wet my father’s lips as the breathing dried the area around his mouth. When she left, I started to provide the moisture that seemed to ease his suffering, as well as hold his hand. For the most part, I wrote my thoughts down as the day progressed, and they have become part of this reflection. I tried to let God speak to me through everything I saw and observed during the day. 

My daughter Tara surprised everyone with a video of her singing Scarlet Ribbon – a song my Dad often sang when it was time for my girls to go to bed. It brought back memories of a man who loved his grandchildren as much as the basketball court. 

It is late on Tuesday, heart rate is 110, breathing is rapid and shallow, hands are warm and swollen. His body fights for life. On the walls are pictures of family – Patsy (wife), children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. There are smiles to go around, all memories of days long past for the man lying in the bed. On the bookcase are horses – small models of all kinds of western horses that Dad loved. I am not sure why because I never knew him to ride, but I think it represented the Old West, which he loved. All the books of Zane Grey line the shelves. He read them all and loved to talk about each story. He loved the West with its vast open spaces and beautiful high skies. In our growing up there were no tall buildings, wide streets, or shops on every corner to crowd out the beauty of nature that often surrounded us. In Flagstaff, every morning you were greeted by the San Francisco Peaks – one could not hope for a better view. 

He coached literally thousands of young men and women, caring deeply for their character as much as he loved winning the game in front of him and the team. I played on some of his best teams – the undefeated state championship team of 1975. At one point that season, we were defeating a team that we genuinely did not like (Page), 64-18 at halftime. I was a member of the starting five, and we had it in our mind to inflict one of the worst losses on that team that they had ever suffered.  At the beginning of the third quarter my dad pulled the starters out and we watched the rest of the game. We won the game by 30 points, but we knew we could have beaten them by 50 if he had left us in. We were frustrated. Among many things he had to say, he pulled us over in the locker room and noted that the job of a team was to play the best they could together to win the game. He would never be a part of a program whose goal was to embarrass another team. Victory was important, but character is more important because character travels with you long after the crowds no longer remember the victories. It was just one of many lessons I learned that year.

My Dad was foremost a man of faith – Christian faith. He loved the Lord and the church. He knew as well that it was through Jesus that he could be transformed in his relationship with God and his neighbor. I never knew a time when Sabbath was not important to him. If you were visiting you knew Sunday was going to be spent at the house of the Lord. He taught me that life was to be lived in pursuit of Christ. As I sit and listen to his difficult breathing, I hear in the back of my mind that old song by Jim Reeves:

“This world is not my home
I'm just a-passing through
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue

The angels beckon me
From heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home
In this world anymore

Oh Lord, you know
I have no friend like you
If heaven's not my home
Then Lord, what will I do?”

The song is right in that this world is not our home. God created us to bring his love and kingdom commitments to this world. In this world, he was molding us each day for the world that is to come. I can feel it: The angels beckon my father as they will seek me when the time comes. In his famous story, The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis described it this way (forgive my poetic license): “But the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for my Dad this is the end of all the stories on this earth. And for him it was only the beginning of the real story. All his life in this world and all his adventures in the West had only been the cover and the title page. Now at last he is beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read,  which goes on forever,  in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

The end of this life came uneventfully for him. We played hymns and listened closely. His breathing slowed, and we could tell that the time was near. Each breath was labored. We called the caregiver and she came quickly. She tried to measure his oxygen and breathing rates and could not find a pulse. Death was coming. As he was taking his final breaths, I looked for a song to play and found Vince Gill’s Go Rest High on the Mountain, and that became the song that carried him home. One more breath and he had left this world for the next. It was 6:09 p.m. in Arizona on November the 26th of 2024. 

Dad, we praise God that you gave much to us and to all those you coached and taught. Greet those who have gone ahead of you, and we look forward to the day that we will join you! 

Your son in Christ,

Robin