NOTE:  This ended up being a whole lot of {meandering} thoughts and really separate issues.  But one thing got me pondering another…you know how it goes.  :)

My Father-in-Law passed away just before Christmas.

He was 90 and though it was unexpected, as he was just living his life at a 90-year old gait, we had actually said our farewells last August when he travelled here to Colorado for a family reunion in Estes Park.  It wasn’t because he was sick or we are morbid, but he lived several states away and life being what it is, well, he was 90…

August.

When I hugged him good-bye for the last time, this gentle giant of a man who had become almost so fragile-thin I feared he would break, we both wept.  We hugged for a long time and I wanted my hug to tell him how much I loved and respected him and thanked him for his role in my life.  I had this everything-else-fading-into-the-distance moment of zoom-lens-present reality, knowing that the miles between us were great and the days together were gone.

Not everyone gets this.  I was lucky to feel his love and be able to share it back.  In very few spoken words and in very many unspoken, we said our goodbyes.

He went back to Washington.  I returned to my life.

Raymond Leroy Rhoades

Dad Rhoades was older than my parents by a long shot.  He and Dave’s mom had 4 children ranging in age from 8 to 18 when they decided to adopt Dave.  Then when Dave was 8, his little sister Debbie was born.  They definitely had at least 2 families.

He married young, served in the army in WWII, raised 6 children, outlived 2 wives and had plenty of female companionship in his final days (he was an avid game player at the senior center) and served God {amazing servant} with his whole heart every day of his life.

He answered the phone, “Well, Praise the Lord!” And said good-bye with the promising words to meet again, “Well, here, there or in the air.”

He was a Kansas boy.  A soldier.  A railroad man.  He was in law enforcement for many years including 17 years with the Denver County Sheriff’s office.  He was a Bible teacher, a husband, a father and how many grands and greats and great-greats?  I don’t even know.  Many.  He was a father to many. {found this}

But when we parted in August, both of us crying, that parting-promise was understood. It would likely be neither here, nor there, but yes, we’ll meet again.  We will.

December.

We were doing the Nativity photo shoot in Dessa and Ryan’s backyard when we got a text saying he’d fallen and an ambulance was on the way.  He was living with Dave’s older sister and her husband.  Before the next update came, he was gone.  He had been just fine – in great spirits, he wanted to take Ray and Sharon to breakfast and when he went to his room to get something, he just collapsed.  And he died shortly thereafter.

He went peacefully, really, and quickly and I know it was a reward for the life he lived.

I was just running around photographing and videotaping my grandbebes, my reward and gift from God, and Dad Rhoades was going to his reward.  He was gone, just like that.

There was no funeral because he didn’t want a fuss.  And his large (and growing) family is spread everywhere, so now, today, is the first opportunity to hold a service. He’d decided to be cremated and this afternoon his remains will be interred at Leavenworth National Cemetery in Kansas in a Military Memorial and celebration of his life.

Then we’ll go on.  As we have been.

There is a sadness, a contemplation for a man without whom I would not have the family I have.  Yes, he was 90 and he’d lived a full, long life, but still-there is an empty place now.  And the family gathering to memorialize has stirred it in me again, like in December.

I feel sad and some might say pragmatically, “Well, he is in a better place.”  And life is hectic and the days zoom by and we weren’t seeing him nearly regularly enough anyway.  But I feel sad partly because his death didn’t stop us all in our tracks to remember – a man who was not perfect, but who lived and loved Jesus and all of us with strong love.  And there are these generations of his seed serving God today and he was just a regular man who’d serve his country and God and loved his family, but he was also the man who fathered this big group of amazing people who are spread out everywhere living incredible lives.  How will we remember that and honor that?

Dave’s dad died.  His dad.  That is a huge deal.  That is life-altering.  His quiet, loving, easy-to-cry presence is gone from us and we need to mourn that and we need to remember.

The whole system.

How do we mark grief?  Is it enough?  Are we showing enough reverence for life?  It is so strange and culturally varied, the way we “do” death.  I just want to make sure, for my kids, that we don’t just wrap it up as quickly as possible and forget to grieve and to remember.  How long should grief take?  How long should we still laugh when we think about a funny incident with that person gone or burst into tears at a recollection?

My close friend had a young son die recently and already, she feels guilty that the pain is still so strong, a mom who has lost her child.  He was taken in his prime, his early 40s, and somehow we don’t get that the mourning needs to last as long as it needs to last.  And sometimes the mourning will be loud and strong and other times sweet and quiet and full of gentle recollections, but why don’t we have a way to signify that some one has gone through loss and everyone around them should know and maybe cover their tender hearts for awhile?

I follow Rick Warren on Twitter and I am watching him grieve the recent loss (at least as much as a public figure allows us to see on Twitter) of his 27-year old son to suicide.

“Grief is a tunnel to growth,”

one Tweet read.  He is making sense of it all sometimes, with clarity. Other times you sense his deep, reverent pain,

“Some things you don’t get over;  you get through them.”

I love that some Tweets are so prayerful and purposeful, I guess you could say, “I don’t want to go back to how things were. I want to be a better man, more in-tune with Jesus, more compassionate of others.” He is determined to serve others anyway, knowing that healing that brings, too.

Our loss isn’t so unusual or unordinarily painful.  Dad Rhoades was 90.  But…What is the right way to remember and yet release?  To celebrate a life but go on without it?  Should the funeral be in the first 24 hours like some cultures?  Should it be in 3 days or 5?  And then, boom – over?  We’ve had the service now, move on.  Wouldn’t it help to somehow give the grieving hearts of those left behind a way to let it last as long as it needed to last?  We deny the mourning their mourning clothes, their sackcloth and ashes – that which discloses the season death and loss have brought. And the vibrant life once lived becomes a faded photograph with stories forgotten.

I wish there was a way, culturally, we could signify: I have lost some one important.  Please ask me about them and let me tell you their story.  Because I think it would go a long way in both honoring their lives and in healing our grief.  Our mourning could seem normal, acceptable and covered and received.

We are expected to be done mourning during the after-funeral carry-in meal.  Turn on the TV, put on some comfy clothes – get over it.

I am not agonizing daily over Raymond L. Rhoades.  But my husband’s father died, the man who adopted him into his family and treated him with care.  My husband’s father is gone, this adoptive daddy with whom my husband won a father-son look-alike contest when he was 5.  Raymond Rhoades died, him – the card-games playing grandpa, the one with the fork trick and the man passing out coins and bills with love to his grandchildren.  He was important to our family.

Our family is altered.  A father has died.

I need to be wrapped in clothing that says I am sad he is gone.  I am mourning with an eye on the day we’ll be reunited.  Yes it was 4 months ago and I rejoice in where he is and I remember his life with great love and respect.  His life is worth all the time it will take me to do so.

I haven’t said this well.  But these are things I am thinking.  Wondering.

Remembering you today, dad, with great love, always.

{wrote about it here, first}