Category: family life

Eulogy for My Father

Shirleyjdietz2 Comments

I had the privilege of giving the eulogy at my Father’s memorial service on Saturday. The church was full and I was overwhelmed by the way family and friends came out to honor this man.  You may have heard about him in many of my family stories but this kind of rounds the story out, and I believe it belongs here for others to read.  

One of my favorite pictures of Dad and Mom
One of my favorite pictures of Dad and Mom

Thank you all, family and friends, for being here for this last formal celebration of my dad’s life. There are 28 of us from all over the country staying over at Par Place. You have blessed our family overwhelmingly with meals, campers for temporary lodging, your visits that have been welcome distraction from our grieving and your words of caring. Thank you from all of us.

Last Monday as we were sitting int the conference room with Mike, the funeral director, talking about this service, I got a call and stepped out to talk a few minutes with my aunt Irene, Dad’s sister. I came back in the room and found out I was giving the eulogy. Is there a lesson in that? I think so. I decided I probably could do that without trouble. It is not hard for me to think of many good things to say about Owen Smith, my Dad.

These days there aren’t many people who can say that they spent their whole life in one community of people. Dad was born on the same property where he was on the day he died. He attended the Wesleyan church as a child, was married in that church, took his own children there for many years, and now here we are, again in the Wesleyan church, remembering all that in the same community of people. There was something very dear to dad about this community of people. For many years his workaholic nature made it difficult to have a lot of close friendships but even then he was adding to his network – clients he worked for, business people in town, visitors he met at church, neighbors, parents of his childen’s friends. Roots were growing deep. He loved Hayward. In the last few years each time one of us children came home there were drives out in the country, or motorcycle rides that Dad looked forward to and he would point out places “I dug that basement”, “I put that driveway in.” “We hunted that 40 over there” He liked pretty much everyone he met. His big sister Irene told me that from boyhood on she couldn’t think of anyone that didn’t like her little brother Owen, or anyone that he didn’t like. And as another one of us put it “he was overall a conservative person but when it came to his time he was generous to a fault” usually ready and able to help those with physical needs.

Typically you would not hear Dad talking about his spiritual life or his inner thoughts. You would hear him talking about his work and his people. The Bible tells us that God had a work to rest ratio of six to one and Dad had at least that. One of our nicknames for Dad was after the cartoon character “Tasmanian devil” because he was attacking his work with a sort of frenzy that seemed never ending to us. Of course farming meant long hours, so did the excavation work. I can imagine the pressure of providing for a growing family weighed heavily on him and he took it very seriously. He was a good provider. But it often meant coming home late and missing out on family time. We started knowing our Dad better when we became old enough to join him in his work, sometimes in the field or in the barn, or out on the job.

Work was his escape and stress reliever but also the source of much of his stress. I remember one summer, coming home to visit after my parents had moved to their cabin on Round Lake. There had been a lot of frustration about remodeling it to be their permanent home and Dad followed an impulse to put the house up on jacks and dig a basement under it. And that’s how we found things. The house up swaying on it’s stilts, and Dad not knowing what to do next with an anxiety level so high he was having heart arrhythmias. And of course, in all his occupations he had close bonds with his machines that always needed some kind of fixing. I have seen Dad, hands covered in grease, lying under one machine or the other all my life. As recent as last year I arrived on a visit and found Dad with a gash healing on his head – he had been under a big mower which had fallen on him and trapped him until help came.

We always knew that Dad loved us. He rescued me from various perils, he surprised me with my first car, he always stopped in to check on us when we lived on the farm for a few years, he was willing to change his wintering place to the town in Florida where we moved, always glad to see us when we visited. But because he was always doing something, or looking for something to do, there wasn’t a whole lot of relational talking going on. I think toward the end of his life, Dad realized that friendships could be rather superficial and he wanted more than that.

Some of that changed in these last few years. His eyesight diminished and he could no longer see to do much of his work. He had to stop driving. His hearing loss often left him unaware of things being said around him. As frustrating as his disabilities were to him, I really believe that God used those disabilities for Dad’s good. When he couldn’t see to work anymore, he got in touch with humility in a different way because he often had to ask for help. He became more dependent on Mom. Every morning after coffee, she would read out loud to him. They would do a few chapter of scripture and then spend a while in some other book Mom chose – usually something she thought would be especially interesting to him. They would talk about what they were reading. He really enjoyed this time with her.

He started looking after friends in his neighborhood, checking to see how they were every day. He got an iphone, as intimidating as that might be to any elderly person, and learned to use it to keep in touch with people on his call list. When he wasn’t talking on it, he learned to set it to his Pandora app. He would put it in his pocket, loudly playing his country favorites, and walk around in a cloud of music. We could always hear him coming.

I think we all have had the experience of knowing something in our life was not right, that God wanted us to work on it and was patiently dealing with us, and that maybe we were avoiding his efforts. These past couple of years I think Dad was going through this process. It was important to me as his daughter to see him respond positively to this spiritual assignment. He became more humble, more open about questions and doubts, more grateful for God’s blessings, more sweetly loving and appreciative of family members. I think he was in a better position with God when he died. And some of that is even evident in the circumstances of his death. Dad saw his own father and many others go through their last years with confusion, dementia, and some with cancer, and pain, He had expressed how nice it would be to just be here one minute and gone the next without all that struggle. And that is how he went. Having just asked Mom a question, he left and went elsewhere to have it answered. By God’s mercy, he was not the surviving spouse left to deal with the issues of what to do next. By God’s mercy Mom was not alone with him when this happened but had her grandson there to help her. By God’s mercy there was no crucial unfinished business. By God’s mercy we all have made it here to remember him, to celebrate who he was and to comfort each other.

I had a good father. I knew I was loved. He worked hard to provide for us and to give us a secure childhood, but also had fun times. In this day and age I realize how blessed I am to be able to say these things. At the same time I know that in some of this telling I may have sounded a bit harder on my dad than you would expect in a eulogy. What I want to leave you with, … what I’ve learned from knowing my Dad, is that none of us has to be perfect to be deeply loved. As children and on into our adult lives, we Smith kids weren’t perfect but Dad loved us, worried about us, kept on trying to provide for and parent us. As a father, a husband, and all the other hats he wore, Dad wasn’t perfect either but it is clear that he touched many lives. He touched mine. I loved him so much and will miss him in so many ways.

A to Z Family Stories: P for a couple different things

Shirleyjdietz9 Comments

Picture board

Mom has been sorting through her pictures for years now, organizing them into albums for each of us kids and albums on different subjects.  She has so many printed pictures because she has lived so many years when printed pictures were the only option – there were no digital cameras.  .

My first camera was a Brownie box camera.  There were little, square lenses that you could take out on the top. In fact, you could take the whole camera apart and put it back together again. It was that simple.  You bought rolls of film with only 8 frames on them, put them in the camera and turned a knob to roll them into place.  If you were lucky you got black and white photos several weeks later when you finished the film and sent it away to be developed.  If you weren’t lucky you got underexposures, over exposures, pictures with no subject in them, pictures of your fingers over the lens, etc… There were so many things that could go wrong, and commonly did.  This was the only way to preserve memories of important times, but it resulted in lots of terrible pictures.

Color film came along but was much more expensive.  Then cameras improved and film had 24 and 36 frames so we took more pictures.  Still, there was no way to know if the picture was good until after it was developed and printed. And it still had to be sent to a developer for the prints (expensive) because few people knew how to process their own films.  Now we have digital photos and don’t know how we ever managed without them. We only print the best, for special reasons, and store the rest on disks or hard drives.

Mom’s photo albums show this history of pictures, from the small black and whites to the present near-perfect digitals.  In addition to the albums she has made picture boards of her favorite family pics.  She is not afraid to crop them, trim them up with decorative edges, and paste them on a cardboard.  Her philosophy – get them out where people will look at them more often.  If they sit in a box or a drawer forever, no one enjoys them and they are forgotten.

I found myself in this pic with my brothers
I found myself in this pic with my brothers

The picture boards hang in the guest room of her house.  Everyone loves to look at them and see how many times they can find themselves.  We see how we all have changed over the years with growth spurts, changes in hairstyles, added weight, and more recently, the wrinkles.  It’s not fancy, or expensive.  There are no real frames or glass (which would be alright too) and it doesn’t seem to matter.  We all love looking at pictures of our crazy, lovable extended family.

Mom's picture board collage
Mom’s picture board collage

Peanut 

We had a single milk cow.  For some reason which I do not recall, we named her Peanut.  This was the time in my family history that my dad was almost finished with farming, but it was still nice to have a cow to provide milk for the family.  She was a Holstein and a pretty good milk producer.  One cow is not enough to justify having a milking machine so my brothers milked her by hand morning and evening.  I might have done it a few times too but I was now away at college so I didn’t know Peanut very well.

There was enough milk that we also provided some to neighbors, which required that it be pasteurized for safety. The milk was heated in a metal pasteurizer, a gallon or two at a time, in our kitchen.  When it reached the right temperature it would shut itself off and we would cool it as quickly as possible.  Sometime our refrigerator would be so full of glass one-gallon jars of milk that there was little room for anything else.  As the milk sat in the fridg, the cream would rise to the top and we would skim it off and make butter. Peanut butter. There was also plenty for making ice cream, and just for drinking.  We were known as the farm where you could get Peanut milk.

There is something good about the memory of leaning up against a big,warm animal and hearing the rhythmic sound of that stream of milk filling the pail.  There’s a good dose of nostalgia in remembering the fun it was to try to squirt the cats when they came running by. It was good to live on the farm… just sayin’.

A Holstein, just like Peanut was.
A Holstein, just like Peanut was.

A to Z Family Stories: N for Nona, Storybook Grandma

Shirleyjdietz1 Comment

Nona, her name, or at least the name she was willing to tell us. Her “real” name had something to do with Rosa or Rosabelle but she was not going let us call her that and never explained why to our satisfaction. She was my grandmother.

Three of my brothers and I were born in succession, two years apart, to a young mom who was thrust into childrearing almost before she was done being a child herself. We also lived in semi-isolation in the country. We desperately needed a good grandmother and fortunately, my dad’s mother, Nona, was that person. She and grandpa lived fairly close to town so it was a grateful mother who would drop us kids off to play in safety while she did grocery shopping or errands.

Grandma was always glad to see us come, always had a smile for us, gave us freedom to play and explore outside and seemed to be waiting for us to come in and have story time. She commonly sat at the kitchen table for letter writing and other work but come story time she would move to her recliner. We would grab a handful of books from the shelf in the stairwell and pile on top of her and the chair and listen as long as she would read. Peter Rabbit, Elmer Fudd, and other Little Golden Books were our well-worn favorites.

Grandma Nona wore an apron, the kind that goes over the head and covers the front of the dress, because she wore dresses all the time and they needed to be kept stain free. The apron only came off when she left the house to go to town or when pictures were being taken. It was a functional piece of clothing, used to carry everything from eggs gathered in the coop, to asparagus picked along the fence row. Besides the apron, her “grandma uniform” was pretty consistent – the same kind of dress, thick flesh-colored stockings, the same type of shoes. Once my aunts got her to wear a polyester pantsuit which she liked and acknowledged as comfortable, but I never saw her wear it again. She was probably saving it for “good” like all the other new things given to her as gifts.

Grandma stopped going to church when I was very young. She stayed home and cooked dinner for us, on her wood fired cook stove. We would arrive shortly after noon, to a very warm kitchen, where we sat down to fried chicken, mashed potatoes, garden vegetables, rhubarb sauce or some other dessert. Grandma baked her own bread and was also know for her cookies which were kept in a tightly covered lard can in the cupboard under the sink. All girls, including me, washed dishes after the meal, dried them and put them away. The vegetable trimmings, kept in a “swill pail” under the handwashing sink, would be taken out to the chickens or thrown on the garden. Then a couple of hours of quiet play would ensue while the grownups digested, slept or read.

Even when I went away to college, grandma was one of my strongest supporters. She would write to me regularly, as well as writing to each of her three daughters every week. When I would visit home she would watch out the kitchen window for me to come down her driveway. She would sit at the table with me, smiling, and listen to everything I could tell her about school, home, my life. I remember after I was married, bringing my firstborn daughter to grandma and setting the baby in her lap as she sat in the recliner. “Little sweetie” she called her. Somewhere there is a picture of that.

I miss her now. I think of many things I would ask her if I had the chance to do it, deeper subjects, questions that no one who knew her seems to be able to answer. I’m just sayin’, if you have a grandma, an aunt, a mom, who is close to you, have those conversations while you can. They are precious.

Grandma Nona wearing her apron, sitting in her recliner, maybe waiting to read a story...
Grandma Nona wearing her apron (a rare picture!), sitting in her recliner, maybe waiting to read a story…

They were hand in hand…

Shirleyjdietz5 Comments

They were walking together holding hands, this lady and the child with the long, blonde pony tail. They were heading toward a row of seats in the front. I often sit in the back and watch as people filter in. Something about this pair caught my attention and held it. The small one, probably about seven or eight years old, was looking up at the older woman who presumably was her mother.

They were talking and the little one kept smiling and was so focused on her mom’s face, so expectant of something good. Neither of them were unusually attractive but together they were magnetic and beautiful. I couldn’t stop watching. They found two chairs in the fourth row and the girl laid her books down on the chair next to her, still turning to dialogue with mom, her face open, trusting, excited, hopeful.

Is it because I have daughters of my own that this simple familial scene made me suddenly feel like I might cry? I don’t even know what I was thinking – but it was kind of like nostalgia, maybe a bit of envy, a lot of sadness, mother angst.

My daughters are grown and it’s been while since I’ve walked hand in hand with either one of them. I don’t know if we would have had that same dynamic when they were seven and accompanying me to an event. It’s hard to remember what we were like, but I want that. I want that memory.

That mom, I wish I had taken a picture to give to her, I’m just hoping she is marveling at what she has, hoping her memory will be better than mine.

mother and daughters (2)

A Different Kind of R & R

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It often means rest and relaxation to others. Not to me. I can’t even rest and relax when I’m asleep.  My R&R is responding to randomness.

Randomness has a couple definitions, some of which I apply to my life and some, not so much.  The one I like is “random is often used neutrally to describe that which is done or occurs by chance but also suggests that one is receptive to the possibilities of the unexpected”.  I often have to make decisions about going places and doing things that are not my usual routine. Truth is, I don’t know what my usual routine is anymore.   Something unexpected is always happening, it seems, and those are the things to which I love to respond.

I have four younger brothers and a couple weeks ago the oldest of them called.  He lives in the same state as I do, but it’s been years since we devoted much time to each other.  We are more often at family gatherings with crowds of other people to divide our attention.

“How would you like to help me drive up to Wisconsin?  I’m taking a truck and trailer up to get some equipment and I thought it would be a time for us to get in a good talk.” I had to agree that 30 hours of drive time would amount to a pretty good talk.

In my mind I’m tallying up the things I would need to reschedule or back out of.  “Well sure, I think I could do that but let me have a day or so to work on it. I’ll let you know.”

Road trip!!!

And that’s how things get started.  After telling several people what I was considering doing I had to call him back to find out why we were doing this in the middle of winter, trying to get up and back between blizzards.  Also, was I actually going to be asked to drive the truck with the 30 foot trailer or was I just going along to keep him from falling asleep?

The truth is, I love family adventures more than any other kind.  Should I not take any opportunity to get to know these people with whom I share genetic material? And how better to get to know them than to actually be doing something with them?  Appalachian hikes, trail rides on horseback across Florida, camping across the country and picnicking at 12,000 feet  in the Rockies, cruising with everyone for a 50th anniversary – all these things started with a somewhat unexpected idea, to be rejected or embraced. Thankfully, most of my family is of the “bring it on” nature.

My randomness is by no means purposeless or unplanned.  Just unexpected.  In fact, planning and anticipating is at least half of every adventure for me.  Sometimes it takes weeks, and other times it gets pulled together in hours.  There’s a lot of variety.  Because of all this I have actually forgotten how to be bored, well, almost.  The brother I planned on starting the trip with tomorrow morning has already called to delay our departure because of unforeseen circumstances BUT it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he showed up at the door, ready to go tomorrow morning.

There are really two reasons this lifestyle works for me.  One is that I do need a lot of variety, whether at work or at play. I have very few routines and don’t do them very consistently. I love surprise!

The other reason is that I don’t claim to have control over my circumstances, so it never disappoints me when I don’t.  Those circumstances are in the hands of God, whom I look to kind of like a writer and director of a big story, and the only one who has read the whole script.  When I get up in the morning, I’m not always sure where my part is going to be played out but I know the director is going to direct me.  After all, he’s given me a part in the story because he wants me there.  What seems random to me is in no way random to him.  He is the ultimate planner and takes care of all the details.  I just have to respond and follow directions. There is a lot of peacefulness and freedom to have fun in that.  And sometime tomorrow I will probably be having fun, somewhere on I-75, talking with my brother.  Just sayin’…

My four brothers lined up in back. On the left is the eldest one with whom I will soon be reacquainted.
My four brothers lined up in back. On the left is the eldest one with whom I will soon be reacquainted.

Restless, Unsettled and Needing to Do

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Only one more hour to go, and one cup of coffee...
Only one more hour to go, and one cup of coffee…

Sometimes when a problem is “out there”, waiting to be solved and yet I do not know how to solve it, perhaps it is not even my problem to solve, I get so restless I can hardly think of anything else. Even when I’ve done whatever I can and resolve to wait patiently, it doesn’t work.  I keep thinking and wanting action.

Such was the case this week.  Dr. Julia’s vet truck was acting up again and being very unreliable.  There has been a lot of discussion about replacing it so she can work without getting stranded, having to borrow a vehicle.  This time there was a decision made to swap the offending truck with the husband’s newer and bigger truck.  And once all the involved parties were in agreement I wanted to get it done.  I was barely able to hold back today while I cleaned the husband’s things out and washed his truck.  I took it to get seat covers (what idiot decided white was a good color for the upholstery in a truck?!).  I got the tires checked and the warning lights reset.  I filled the windshield washer fluid to the full line. I vacuumed and sorted out all the loose change, napkins and register receipts from numerous fast food places (evidently they serve heart healthy items that are on his diet. Yeah….)

And then it seemed I was ready.

I didn’t want to  wait until tomorrow.

I decided to make the trip right away and it surprised me that I could not wait..

Whereas I am often very patient, I am not at all that way in this kind of situation.  I feel impulsive and a bit out of control. Maybe it’s because I am still a parent and want very much to help even though my adult child is very capable of handling this situation herself.

So, four hours later, I am in Jacksonville having made the trip safely with the help of a MacDonald’s coffee stop.   I’m hoping to be able to rest now because there will be a lot to do tomorrow.  As usual, just sayin’…