Stuff on Us

On December 9, 2010 I received a phone call from my sister Carey telling me that my Dad had had a really bad night and I might need to come down there to NC. A few hours later she told me that yes, I should get on a plane. Luckily I listened to her and flew out a few hours later. Turns out he had had a massive heart attack resulting in damage to 69% of his heart. I spent that evening at the hospital with my mom, my brother and my sisters and then spent the night at the hospital with my Dad. From when my mom left in the late evening until 2:30 in the morning I was in my dad’s room in CICU and worked with the nurses there to keep him comfortable. He was uncomfortable and agitated and occasionally in pain but was fully himself in terms of communicating. He was talking and laughing all night long. I told him all the stories I could think of about my kids and work and recent goings on in Minnesota. Some of the time I just sat there and read my book while he tried to rest. It was a long night and my sister Kim took over at 3:00 am. I am so thankful I made the trip to NC and that I had those few hours with my Dad. He died the next morning from complications related to a massive heart attack. Right up until the end I had no thought that he was going to die. Though hooked up to machines and ivs and monitors he did not look pale or sick to me. He looked and acted just a vital as he always was and I to this day still have a hard time reconciling my experience that night with his death the next morning. My mom and all five of his children were there and were hanging out with him in the days and hours before he died and I know that he enjoyed having all of us around.

The day before the funeral I drove from Kilmarnock, VA to Richmond to pick up my husband Jason and our kids from the airport. They had flown in from Minnesota, just missing the bitter winter storm that shut down the airport 2 hours after their flight took off. On the drive to Richmond I could hardly see the road, not because of the wet weather but because of the tears that would not stop flowing. During that drive I wrote my Dad’s eulogy on a notepad from a hotel in Las Vegas. There were two or three scribbled lines on each page and I even used the back of the pages. Not being able to see what I was writing since I was driving, I was not sure I’d actually be able to read my notes by the time I got to Richmond and lo and behold I was just about right. However, those few hours on the road were enough to put together the outline of what I wanted to say. We spent that night at my Uncle Booper's house and I lay awake most of the night going over the speech in my head and refining it. I did all the crying I could stand that night while my kids slept peacefully around me. Every time I thought of them growing up without their PopPop I'd get started again. I don’t think I slept at all that night.

I don’t think that I did my dad justice but we can only do what we can do. Here is the gist of the Eulogy as I remember it. I am sure it’s not quite right but it’s the best I can do a few days later. If it’s not what I said exactly, it’s what I meant to say and so it will work.

There are so many things to think about. They keep coming up. When Uncle Frankie mentioned the Eulogy and asked who should do it I thought: Oh no, one more thing to think about. I thought about what we should do and as I do when I am confused and don’t know what to do, I called Jason and asked him what he thought. We talked about different people and some different ideas. Before we could decide anything someone needed something and we had to go. After we hung up I decided I would give the Eulogy. So here we are. I’m going to give this for myself, and for my kids a little bit too. I can’t believe he is gone. Even here today when Josh was being antsy and making noise I thought “where’s Dad? Give Josh to him and he’ll keep him occupied”. Then I remembered oh yeah, Dad’s over there, he can’t take Josh.

When thinking about getting up here to talk, I panicked a little bit, because he was my dad and I did not know how everyone else saw him. How could I talk about him? He was a great dad, but that does not tell the whole story.

He was my father, so I don’t know what kind of husband he was. But then I remembered that my mom told me a few days ago that she could not be too sad, because she had 43 good years with him, and what was sad about that? So maybe I have some idea of what kind of husband he was. And then I look at my husband, and my sisters’ husbands. And my Dad was our first and best example of what a husband should be. And I look at these guys and I think I know exactly what kind of husband he was.

He was my father, so I don’t know what kind of brother he was. But I know that his brother and sisters and his brothers and sisters in law are here, so shouldn’t I be able to talk about him as a brother? Then I thought about my uncle Wayne and my aunt Brenda and my aunt Mary Kay and they loved him so much they did not even call him Billy but gave him his own special name, Bibbie. And you all know how much he loved babies. Aunt Brenda and Aunt Mary Kay were his first babies. So maybe we know what kind of brother he was. And then I look at my brother and my sisters and I think about the kind of relationship he fostered in us. And I think about how he made sure we all got together and went to the beach together every summer. And I think about how he would make about 600 trips up and down the stairs of the beach house unpacking that car every time and I think that was a sign of how important family was. And I think I know what kind of brother he was.

He was my father so I don’t know what kind of son he was. But I know what kind of father he was to his own son, so I think that tells us something. And I only saw my dad cry twice in my life, and one of those times was at my grandmom’s funeral. So that tells us a little about what kind of son he was. My dad was always positive and he never felt sorry for himself. No matter what he was going through he looked at it the best way possible. Through all his health issues I never once heard him say anything negative or heard him be upset by what he was going through. The only thing I ever heard him say was with respect to his dad. When he lost his leg, he was so adamant that PopPop, his father, never find out because he knew how upset his dad would be. I think there was a wedding and a funeral and through it all he made sure that his dad never found out that he had lost his leg. I told my sisters the other night that I hope he has his leg back in heaven otherwise he’ll be ducking and dodging his dad for all eternity so he never has to find out about his leg. So maybe we do know what kind of a son he was.

He was my father so I don’t know what kind of a friend he was. But there are friends here, and I think that tells us something. About 5 years ago my dad called me and told me he ran into a friend of mine at the grocery store. This woman approached him and said “Mr. Jefferson, do you remember me?” Now, this was a girl that I was friends with in elementary school so he did not recognize her. “I’m Beth Kelly” she said. “I used to come to your house for sleepovers all the time.” Those were the kinds of relationships that he fostered in us, an open house and a welcoming home where kids would remember such things 25 years later. So maybe we do know what kind of a friend he was.

Now I want to tell a couple of other things about my dad. Dad loved to fish. He'd pack those fishing poles up in the car, they'd be hanging out the back window as they drove down the hiway. Even if they were only going for the weekend and my mom would say "we don't need those fishing rods" he'd pack them anyway just in case. He taught me how to cast and reel and reel that pole in-I don't know all the right words but he taught me to fish. He taught me and all my siblings and probably some of you how to fish. And to this day, as old as I am, he never once gave me a hard time about not wanting to touch the bait. To this day, as recently as last summer, he would stop whatever he was doing, even if it was reeling in the biggest fish in the world, and bait my hook for me. That’s the kind of Dad he was.

My Dad used to carry a big wad of keys on a leather strap on his belt buckle. To this day, and I am sure for the rest of my life, whenever someone walks by and I hear keys jingling, I look up and think “Is that my Dad walking by?”

I have one final story to tell. And this is a true story from the other night. I don’t think any of my family even knows this story. The other night when I was in Dad’s room in the middle of the night he sat up and scooted to the end of the bed, trying to get comfortable. I called the nurse in to help me get him situated back in the bed the right way. His nurse was on a break so it was a different nurse who came in to help. We got him moved back up to the top of the bed and got his bedclothes straightened out and the tubes and wires back in place and he was still tossing and turning. The nurse looked right at him and said “Mr. Jefferson, do you know why you are here?” Dad said “Yes.” “Mr. Jefferson,” she said, “you are here to get better. Your body and your heart need to rest and you can’t get rest if you are moving around like this all the time. You need to lay here and be still and let your body heal.” Dad, being Dad, could not just let that go. “This bed is so uncomfortable.” He says. “ And I am an active person. I am used to being up and around. I can’t stand just laying here and doing nothing.” “Mr. Jefferson” she says, “do you believe in the Lord?” Dad responds “Yes.” She told him:“Even the Lord rested on the seventh day. Now be like the Lord and get some rest.”

Well, Dad, this is your seventh day. This is your day of rest. May you rest in peace.

First Reconciliation

D received his First Reconciliation last Saturday. This was an interesting one to prepare for because like many (most?) Catholics I myself am intimidated by the whole process of Confession. I know, its supposed to make you feel better, not worse and is a gift from God and all that...still does not make it a whole lot less intimidating. Anyway, I tried to be very matter of fact with D and help him prepare in the way our church has directed us to. Jason and I went through the workbook they gave us (OK, we went through most of...we may have skipped some), we attended the parent only meetings (terribly boring!!!) and the parent-child preparation workshop (an all morning event one Saturday-it was actually a refreshingly good workshop that I think was good for both the parents and the kids). I also (grudgingly) taught D the Act of Contrition that they gave us to teach the kids which is not the one that I learned. Seems like after 2000 or so years they could agree on one prayer that we are all supposed to be using, but whatever-if the Parish thinks this is the one that our kids should be using, so be it. Its a bit tamer than the one I learned though!!

In any case, the night before his First Reconciliation we deemed D appropriately prepared when he told me that he was sure no second grader who received Reconciliation would get stones in his stocking for Christmas. Just to be sure I was understanding what he was saying, since it seemed pretty profound even for our Daniel, I asked him why that was. He explained that since after Reconciliation all of your sins are forgiven, then there was no way a kid who had Reconciliation could have been bad enough before Christmas to not get gifts. I love it when our kids can boil what we thought was a difficult concept into something so simple.

One concept that we seemed to have missed in all of our discussions of Confession was how many times you get to/have to go. I told Daniel that maybe during Advent he, Daddy and I would all go to Confession when they have the Penance Day at our church. He said "I have to go again???" He thought this was a one time shot. Oops. I guess we should have completed all the pages of that Workbook after all....

Pies for Art?
We are very proud of D's artistic ability. Last week we went out to dinner at Perkins (a breakfast/pancake chain for those of you not in the Midwest) and they had a coloring contest. Each child was asked to color a winter wonderland page and at the end of the night they would judge the contest and the child who had the best picture would win a pie. Well, the next morning we got the call-Daniel had won the coloring contest! He is now the proud owner of one pumpkin pie that we will pick up the day before Thanksgiving and have for dessert after our delicious meal. Yeah to Daniel!!!