Hello from the living room as I listen to some Christmas music and look at winter scenes,
Time is such an incredibly complex experience, continually dualistic, seeming like things of our former life could not be so far past (it was only a decade ago when it’s been 25 years or more) and let when we ponder life’s twists and turns it seems eons have occurred since that occasion. I remember going to my 50th high school reunion and feeling incapable of pondering a half century. How did that happen and where did all that time go? As I often reflected this past month, my focus was on the things that now seem so important in my childhood memories, and particularly the memories around the holiday season.
I am not sure, in spite of probably being told at some point, of why Christmas (and not Orthodox) is December 25, which I’m sure has to do with the Annunciation, or how January 1st is the New Year. Something to ask AI, if I want a quick run down, which an entirely different topic for our world now. I wonder if Christmas late in our calendar year is because it offers the opportunity for hope and joy, which starts the new year out in a more positive manner? Certainly having vacations for children and the time to enjoy family and friends has positive things, though I am well aware that the holidays can also be significantly stressful for many.
Twenty-eight years ago today, which was also a Saturday, as I had returned from Texas to the snowy little town of Laurium, I received a phone call from my late sister informing me she believed she should take our father to the hospital. Though he was on hospice, she believed his pain had exceeded a manageable threshold. I told her to do what she believed best. He had been diagnosed with cancer only weeks before, but it was in his liver, kidneys, and pancreas. I had returned to Sioux City to do all the arrangements, from the funeral home to the service itself as well as set up his hospice care. I, myself, was recovering from another abdominal surgery for Crohn’s so I was fortunate to have the time to do what needed to be done. I asked my sister if he was still conscious and could speak and she told me barely. I asked her to put him on the phone.
His voice was garbled as his lungs were filling with fluid and his breathing was labored. It was difficult to make out his words, but he said hello. I told him I loved him, and he said with difficulty, but still enough clarity to be understood, “I love you too.” Those were his last words to me. Kris retrieved the phone and said the ambulance was on its way. As I got off the phone, my eyes welled up in tears, and I remember walking upstairs to the bedroom, where I laid down and cried. He passed the next morning, and I received the phone call as I was headed out the door to supply three parishes I had been at for the last three months. They had been so gracious to me and I was blessed to be with them that morning.
Harry Herschel Martin, my adopting father, and also my fourth cousin, had been my parent since before my 5th birthday. The youngest of five children, he like most in his family had graduated from high school, for him at the height of the depression, and went to work in the packing industry, traveling for Swift and Company. He was a graduate of Sioux City East, excelling at both basketball and baseball. In fact, he played semi-professional baseball. Born in a small house in Riverside, he was a WWII veteran serving in the European theater (mostly in Belgium), became a journeyman electrician, which required significant travel around the Midwest and in the early 1950s living in Yakima, Washington. By the mid-1950s, he would return to Riverside only a few hundred yards from his childhood home. With his wife, they endured the loss of an infant child and a late-term loss of a second, but he wanted to be a parent. That desire led to the adoption of three, what would be my older brother as well as my sister and me. Harry Martin epitomized what Tom Brokaw noted about the “greatest generation.” His work ethic, his loyalty to family, friends, and country as well as his strong moral character are what I remember most. When I spoke at the service the night before his funeral, I noted there were three groups there. His family of relatives, his church family, where he had attended most of my life, and his work family, those electricians who worked with him for decades. The consistency that made father practiced or demonstrated in his life was a testament to his strength and commitment to a greater good.
What I remember most about my father was his incredible ever-present smile and his generous nature. He had perfect pearl white teeth (without either orthodontia or whitening, and his willingness to pitch in and help anyone anywhere. His commitment to whatever he did or to whomever he gave his word was something you could take to the bank, as it is said. While I do not ever remember how m being angry at any of us, I do remember him being quite upset when a meat packing company hired workers to break a picket line in my hometown during my high school years. Another thing he was known to do was speak his mind, never in an arrogant or biting manner, but with a simplicity and honesty that made any response or retort both unnecessary as well as probably foolish. His pragmatist was unparalleled, and in my own reflection of him since his passing, I still find him becoming wiser and more correct.
My father provided stability for three children who were not his own; he gave unceasingly to his church, his neighbors, and to causes that he believed to be important for the betterment of his world. He was quietly generous, unassumingly intelligent, and readily capable of making a difference in any situation he faced. What I can still see now, perhaps more clearly and completely, almost 28 years to the hour since he passed away, is how fortunate I am to call him my father, my dad. Because he wanted a family, and because he was unafraid to allow my grandmother, his cousin, to remain in my life, I had the opportunity to become so much more than I might have. That morning, as I presided over three worship services, I managed generally well until the prayers. I would sing at his funeral, and I would preside at his commital service on that bitterly cold January day at Graceland Cemetery in my hometown. It was so cold that day that I shook and shivered as I spoke the liturgical words of burial. It was a difficult thing to officiate, but it was the most loving thing I could do for the man who made me his own. I still miss you and wish I could come just one more time to ask your advice, hear your comforting voice, and experience your amazing smile . . . And feel that profound love.
Thank you as always for reading.
Michael
thewritingprofessor55 