I lost my dad two years ago. His name was Mark. I have wanted to write an obituary for him. But I wasn't even sure where to start. For some reason, the theme song to The Beverly Hillbillies kept playing in my head, which made me laugh, we loved watching The Beverly Hillbillies together. The banjo strums up… “Come and listen to the story about a man named Mark….”
Sigh, I can hear his laugh now… I struggle with obituaries because it is just another highlight reel. My dad wasn't a fake person and I hate when someone dies and we shine a light on them like they were wonderful and try to paint the happiest picture. It's like all of a sudden we forget that this was a real person and they had real struggles. So I figured I would just share a little bit about who he was… Good and bad. I know that he would appreciate and respect that.
Dad was born and raised in small-town (Rural) Indiana. He lived in the same area his entire life. He bought a piece of property a mile down the road from his parents and lived there until he passed. He never had any desire to move further than his roots. He deeply loved and respected his parents. He had a very close relationship with them. Both of them preceded him in death. He had a younger brother who also preceded him in death. I remember when his brother died, I was in Florida and my dad called me sobbing saying he couldn't believe that his baby brother had died. His family was dysfunctional but despite their disputes, they were close. He and his brother fought like cats and dogs but he would also go to bat for him without thinking twice. He loved his family the best he could.
Growing up he raised hogs and cattle. He was involved in 4-H and played football for a while in school. He was a bit of an underdog. Definitely a loner. He had a few friends growing up but no close friends towards the end. Well, he had a couple of friends who loved him, but he didn't stay in touch with anyone. He was kind of a hermit.
My dad was a hardworking man. He was skilled in many areas. Plumbing, electrical, construction, welding, automotive, and more. A true handyman. If something was broken, he could fix it and he would do it the right way, no shortcuts. He loved power tools, working with his hands, and being outdoors. He built his house with his own two bare hands. He loved tending to his 12-acre property, planting a vegetable garden in the spring, and working in his barn. He worked at Monaco Coach for 30 years. Towards the end of his career there he was running a lathe. Over the years he had done welding for them and was a CNC machinist. He drove a semi for Holiday Rambler for a decade. He enjoyed traveling all over the country and putting on RV shows. He loved his job. When the company closed in the mid to late 2000s, it was detrimental to his mental health and his pride. He looked for work in the area and worked for another company for a couple of years but never found a job that he loved as much again. He went to work for his parents at their business where he worked until a year before he passed. They owned a campground. He was born and raised there. He began mowing the grass there when he was five years old. Even when he was working at the RV company he'd come straight home and work some more. He helped the business grow. He put in all of the electrical boxes and tended to the land. The business completely consumed him. It was his heart and soul and eventually became his entire existence. He poured all of his energy into that business and it robbed him of quality of life and joy. Who he was while working at that business was not who he was at home. He became bitter, angry, and rude at work. He was never able to truly clock out or separate who he was from the business. It got the best of him. Who the public knew was not the man that we knew as his family. I always wished that he could show people who he really was. He was funny, kind, and giving. He would give you the shirt off of his back and was always putting his family before himself. Growing up my dad was my solace. He was my safe place, my strength, my protector, and he always tried to consume my pain. He gave the best hugs & had the best listening ear. He didn’t always know what to say but he was generous with his time and it made me and my family feel so loved. I struggled as a child and into my teens. During that time, he would take me on long drives to look at houses, visit farmer’s markets, or go to lunch, just so we could talk. We talked about everything. He was my absolute best friend. We didn't hold anything back from each other. Dad sacrificed so much for me, including his dream to fly. He loved airplanes. Before I was born he was studying to get his pilot’s license. Unfortunately, he never went back to get his pilot’s license because he went full speed ahead as a dad and the provider. But we enjoyed many airshows and visited air museums over the years. Dad loved most things that involved the outdoors. In the winter we would attend fishing and outdoor shows, home and garden shows, or head to Florida to enjoy the beach. He was always doing something fun with me. After becoming a grandpa he did all the fun stuff with my kiddos too!
We went to the circus and the zoo and made many trips to Disney.
My dad was a Disney fanatic. When he passed he had been to Disney over 40 times and had another trip on the books. We kept the last reservation he had made and took his ashes with us. We sprinkled a teeny pinch of him into the moat around Cinderella's castle at the Magic Kingdom. My dad had been going to Disney World since 1972! (The year after they opened.) He never got tired of visiting and the little boy in him came out at each visit. The last trip without him was not the same. It lacked the special magic that we would encounter with him by our side. He made those trips even more exciting. It was his love for Disney that made it fun.
Without him there it felt very sad. I’m not sure if we will ever return as a family.
My oldest daughter and my dad were great buddies, he started taking her to Disney when she wasn’t quite 2 years old. If I ever do go back, it would be she and I who might return again someday to “visit” Pappaw… Who knows?
My children and I will always hold dear our fond memories of him riding four-wheelers with us. My dad was always playing with some "toy." He loved mowing the grass on his grasshopper zero-turn. He loved mowing the field and moving brush with his tractor. He was a true outdoorsman. I asked him once if he felt connected to God in nature, and at that time, he wasn't really sure.
But later in life, he shared that he did feel close to God in His creation.
I wish I had half the skills that he did. Growing up, he was always making things. He welded together aluminum piers and trailers. One of the piers he crafted, we still have on our property now. He made it in 1997. He welded the date on one of the aluminum Planks. I enjoy sitting on it over the creek and reveling in the beauty of our (his) property. Sometimes I reminisce about my childhood days fishing with him. We used to drop a line in the creek on the old cane pole and fish for bluegill. He would clean them and we would fry them up for supper.
As busy and hardworking as he was, my dad fought a long, lonely battle in life. He spent over twenty years struggling with depression and anxiety. He was heavily medicated and struggled with the side effects of those medications. His anger got the best of him for most of his life. Most people will remember him as the grumpy old man riding on his green John Deere Gator, rushing off to work on the next project at the camp. But in our family, he is remembered as the silly guy who was always cracking a dry-humored joke. My husband holds dear, the memories of him delivering some sly comment at the most inappropriate time! Sometimes he tries to get away with using some of Dad's quotes! 😅
(My husband often referred to my dad as Red Foreman from "That 70s Show", because he was always telling someone they could stick something where the sun doesn't shine!) Dad was a "whatcha see is whatcha get" kinda guy, he never pulled any punches. This was a quality that would easily embarrass most, but in a way, I think the world needs more it of too. You never had to guess how he was feeling or what he was thinking.
He struggled with emotional eating, and I tried to absorb his pain as he did for me as a child. I was always trying to protect him and do things to make sure that wherever we went, his size could be accommodated. Perhaps we were codependent. In some ways, I suppose our relationship was unhealthy as we did depend on each other so much. We were a package deal. Caregiving for him made him feel more like my child toward the end.
In the last year of his life, he was "officially retired" (on disability). I had a pretty good idea of what would happen after he quit working. I just knew he wouldn't last long in retirement. He had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to talk to, aside from me and my family. He would come to my house in the morning to take his medication. On the days when he didn't show up, I would call and remind him or go over to his house for a visit. We lived side-by-side as next-door neighbors. He gifted us 5 1/2 acres by splitting his property nearly down the middle and we built a house next to him. (I told you he was a giver!) The idea was that we would be close and able to care for him.
And we did - but not for long. We built our home in 2020 and he died in 2021.
That wasn't the plan. Not our plan anyway. God had other ideas.
My dad wasn’t just my best friend, he was a part of me.
I was an only child and he was my only parent. Losing him felt like losing a piece of me.
He was 2 weeks into his 59th year of life when he got covid. In 2019 when COVID first came around, his doctor told him that he was a good candidate for death if he were to catch it. He took that very seriously and we took precautions. That was until we celebrated my daughter’s 6th birthday at Pizza Hut in October 2021. He bought her the most beautiful dress for her special day. He drove himself to the restaurant & left early.
Before he left I grabbed his hand and squeezed.
Sometimes I wonder if that was the very moment that he contracted the deadly virus.
I will never forget the way his hands felt. Years of hard work made them rough and scratchy.
Two weeks after I grabbed his hand, he was hospitalized. Initially, I took him to the hospital, thinking that he would have an antibody infusion like I had in the week prior. When we got to the hospital, he was oxygenating around 70 and they couldn't get it above 80 for the infusion. They said he would have to be admitted. I can still see his eyes rolling and his head shaking in the dark hospital room. I naïvely thought that it would be a brief hospital stay so that they could get his oxygen up and infuse him and he would come back home. Instead, he was transported to a larger hospital where he would stay for the next week and a half - alone. He struggled with communication after having two strokes. Normally, if he would have to be hospitalized, I would stay by his side. This time, however, it was different. I was due to have my baby on October 28th. He was admitted to the hospital on October 22nd. We were two years into the pandemic, but full Covid precautions were still taking place. One family member could visit for one hour per day. No children were allowed to enter the hospital doors. The nurses and doctors struggled to communicate with him because of his brain damage. He had brain surgery in 2006 to remove a golfball-sized tumor from between the two lobes. He suffered two strokes in 2019. I was able to understand him and help him communicate with people around us just like a mother with a toddler. But the hospital staff wasn't going to call me for clarification during every confusing conversation.
My heart still breaks thinking about him alone in the hospital frustrated & unable to convey his needs and desires clearly to the staff.
On the 24th in the wee hours of the morning, he coded. The nurse called to tell me that he would have to be intubated. They were telling me he would die if they didn't tube him. I had also been told that if they tubed him that would likely be the end. I begged the nurse to please wait until I could visit and say goodbye. I just wanted to talk to him one more time. She told me that we could FaceTime on her phone. I was upset and screamed, "Would you like to say goodbye to your father over FaceTime?" She told me she would stall as long as she could and to hurry to the hospital. It was an hour's drive to the hospital, I threw my children into the car in their pajamas. My husband drove us there like Mario Andretti. I sobbed all the way there. Unfortunately, they had to intubate him before I arrived, and they were still finishing up when I walked through the door. I never got to FaceTime with my dad. I never got to have another conversation with him. I never got to say goodbye. Well, not to a coherent version of my father. I did hold his head as he took his last breath, but he was heavily sedated at this point.
I praise God that those last moments are NOT how I remember my father.
When I think of him, I think of a healthier version of him. I think of the dad I knew growing up, not the dad who was sick.
The Covid ICU nurse told me that before they sedated him, she told him she was going to call his daughter. She said the last thing that he said to her was, "Don't bother her, she's having a baby." It warms my broken heart to know that - still - in his very last moments, he was thinking of me. He was always thinking of me. He always put my needs before his. There is no doubt in my mind that my dad loved me more than anything.
He was the best Dad.
God blessed me with a dream about my dad this year. It is the only dream I have had of him like this. My dad was in a crowd of people. (Not something he would have done on Earth!) He was a younger version of himself, with no wrinkles, not as heavy, and he had a tan. He was standing in the crowd with a huge smile on his face. He was wearing a nice shirt and he was happy. It was like I was getting a glimpse of him in Heaven. I was on the outside looking in. It was a beautiful gift. This image of him was an absolute blessing.
At first, I thought that I was doing him a disservice by not having a funeral. That is the worldly thing to do, right? No one gathered to celebrate his life or mourn his loss. But I have been reminded that everything happens or doesn’t happen, for a reason. It didn't have to happen and it wasn't the time. I was VERY PREGNANT when my dad died. (3 days passed my due date.) I was also recovering from having COVID myself. My mother-in-law was hospitalized with COVID in another state. Everything was very messy. I feel guilty at times that we didn’t have a “traditional” funeral for my dad. But I cannot imagine many would’ve attended his funeral anyway. Dad didn’t have a group of friends and his family was broken. He died from contracting COVID after having a social gathering. Having another gathering during "Covid season" - with a newborn - was not in the cards for me. I could not "honor" my father with a gathering like the one that killed him. I have found other ways to honor his memory. The ladies from my Bible study brought me a beautiful tree, we planted it in his honor. It is full and flourishing to this day. Last year we decorated it for Christmas. We also put up the HUGE snowman that my dad welded together when I was a kid. ❤️ It was heartwarming to look out the window and see the lights. It was like having Dad there with us for Christmas! 🎄 I have found joy in the little things like this.
After our trip to Disney to spread his ashes, we went to his favorite beach and left a bit of him there too. I went out on the beach alone in the early morning hours and spread some of his ashes in the sand. That winter morning, it was cold and windy but the beach was covered in life. I had never seen that many creatures and shells on the beach before. It was a true blessing from God. After spreading his ashes on the beach we had breakfast at his favorite restaurant.
These are the things that assure me that he was honored. I know this is how Dad wanted us to honor his memory. He didn't like social situations and a big funeral would've made him uncomfortable. I rest in knowing that I knew everything about him. I don't have any doubts or wonders in regard to his wishes or his love for me. He trusted me to do what was right. We never had a full-on conversation about what he wanted after he died, but I told him I was going to have him cremated. Actually, I jokingly said, "I'm going to fry you up like a chicken and put you on the mantle." He said, "I don't care what you do with me. I'll be dead." And that's Dad in a nutshell. "Eh, whatever!"
I have lived painfully without my dad for the past two years. Most of my days are a busy blur with kids here and there. But in the rare moments of silence, I feel sadness. It never fails, when things slow down and I get a moment to myself, I cry. My life has not been the same. My days often feel lonely, like I'm missing something. I feel his absence even in the rush of life with kids. I miss being able to call him when something exciting happens or to share in the day-to-day. I wish he was here to enjoy watching his grandson grow, he would have adored him. I’ve become stronger in some ways and hardened in others. I pray that God will continue to mold me into who HE wants me to be. I will use the loss of my Dad to serve my Father in Heaven. I praise God that in the last year of my dad's life, he began regularly attending church with us. Sometimes he would ride with us and other times he would drive himself. A few times we would go to church and encourage him to come with us, but he would refuse the invitation. Then we would be sitting there during service and here he would come, he'd plop down beside us with a smile on his face. I asked him a few times if he believed in Jesus and he said YES HE DID! When he couldn't attend church with us he would tune in online and watch it from his phone. My heart is at peace knowing that I will see him again someday. Sometimes when I pray I ask Jesus to hug him for me.
I can't wait until the day that I can hug him again.
After I lost my dad, a friend from church brought me a magnet for my refrigerator. It's a tree with a little red cardinal in it that says, "I am always with you."
After that, I received a garden flag with a cardinal on it that says, "When you believe beyond with your eyes can see, signs from heaven, show up to remind you that love, never dies."
Then, all of a sudden, I have this bright, red cardinal that hangs out in the trees that surround our house. Perhaps it is a coincidence. Or it could be a little message from God saying that my dad is OK and all is well. Who knows.
But it doesn't hurt anything to believe in these little God winks. ❤️
Life goes on, it just keeps going. Even after death, when you ache for a sense of calm, life continues on with its busyness. I choose to be strong and lean on Jesus. I have joy in my heart when I think of my dad. There is no doubt in my mind that he loved me. I know that he knew I loved him too. I remember him and smile. My kiddos talk to his tree, his ashes sit by my bedside, & I feel he is still here with us. Always in my heart.
Gone, but never forgotten.
Dear friend,
Thank you for taking the time to read a little about my dad and share my memories of him.
I pray that if you are also grieving, you feel a sense of connection here. You are not alone. Our hearts are inner-twined. As I pray through my grief, I pray that YOU are also comforted by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Love,
Kelsey
If you know someone who is grieving and you think my blog would bring them comfort or strength, please feel free to share.
If you would like me to pray for you, please send me an email at: hellodear@myyahoo.com
I created a shirt in remembrance of my dad.
You can click the link below to check it out. 😇
A song for a laugh:
A song for strength:
Link to my shirt shop:
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