Saturday, June 27, 2015

Dad Was Tough

I have always loved this picture of Dad. He is the one sitting in the car and three of his friends are sitting on the running board. I am old enough to remember running boards. A couple of Dad's cars had them. Dad told me that he was in his mid-20's when this picture was taken, but he couldn't remember where they were or why someone took the picture. He told me the names of his friends, but none of those names meant anything to me and I have long since forgotten who they were. All I know is they are not relatives.


Dad looks so tough in the picture. He wasn't. Not in the way we think of as tough. He has sort of a rebel James Dean thing going on there. Kelly and I thought that this group looked like they were auditioning for a Bonnie and Clyde type movie.

Dad was tough in other ways. He was not gangster-type tough. He was kind and giving and caring. His toughness was in living. He was tough when it came to taking care of his family. He worked hard all of his life. I remember that when Mom became more seriously ill and required more medical care, he worked two and sometimes three jobs to pay the bills and keep food on the table. He was not an educated man, completing school through the eighth grade, but he was a well-read man, and knew much about many things. His lack of education meant that he worked at menial jobs, many times back-breaking jobs. He was a janitor at the First Baptist Church in Willmar, where we attended church. He also cleaned other buildings at night in Willmar, and then went to work at 6:30 every morning to his main job, climbing into boxcars loaded with grain and taking samples to be tested. He took a job feeding turkeys and cleaning the turkey barns on a farm near Willmar. He took on other part-time jobs over the years.

Taking care of a spouse who is chronically ill is not an easy task. It requires an inner toughness. It means putting that person first and your own wants and needs second. Dad had that kind of toughness. He spent many hours at Mom's hospital bedside over the years when she had to be hospitalized for one problem or another related to her arthritis. He got up an hour earlier each morning to see that her needs were taken care of before leaving for work. He brushed her hair, he bathed her, he helped her use the bathroom. When she couldn't get her hands to work, he fed her. He did many things for her that most of us never dream we could do or would have to do. And he did them without ever complaining. When it finally became too much for any one person to handle and when she required constant medical attention, she went to live in the nursing home. Many people would have been grateful not to have to spend so much time on their ailing spouse, but not Dad. He spent every hour that he could at the home with Mom. They talked. They listed to music. They played Scrabble. When I would call, knowing that Dad was always with Mom in the evenings, I would ask what they were doing. He nearly always answered that they were playing Scrabble, that Mom was winning. And then he would add, "But she cheats!" He always maintained his sense of humor, and I think that was one of the things that helped him keep going as long as he did. I asked him once how he did it...how he could devote his entire married life to taking care of her. His answer was simple logic to him.

"I love your Mother."

Yeah.....Dad was tough.

10 comments:

  1. Brought tears to my eyes! Love the story of true love!

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  2. Mary...They were a unique pair. Mother was badly crippled with arthritis. She never complained. Dad cared for her and when he couldn't, he spent as much time with her at the nursing home as he could. He never once complained, either. They were married just three months shy of 51 years. I was blessed to have them as my parents.

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  3. They don't make many folks like that anymore. You were blessed.

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  4. And people wonder today why nobody stays married, why people don't want to work, my the vast majority are utterly and totally devoted to themselves and themselves alone. It was a better society then than it is now.

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  5. Your dad sounds like he was an amazing man!!

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  6. Gorges...I was very blessed. I don't think I could have had a better roll model than my father.

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  7. Harry...You are right. It was a much better society then. People cared about one another. They helped each other rather than get in line for a government handout. And family was important. We had the intestinal fortitude to take care of our own no matter what life threw at us. Men like my father were the rule rather than the exception. I wonder when we lost those ideals.

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  8. Dani...He was an amazing man. The funny part was that he didn't think so. To him, he was just a man doing the best that he could do. It never occurred to him to do any differently.

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  9. That is what our generation called being a man. The next generation needs to hear more stories like this. I had an uncle that went through a similar situation with his wife's dementia.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Grace and peace.

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  10. Pumice...Some consider Dad a hero, but he didn't think so. He just did what was right. His brother put his own life on hold in order to stay on the farm and care for their aging mother, so she could stay in her home without worry. Now we just shuttle Grandma off to the nursing home so we don't have to be inconvenienced. The "Good Old Days" may not have been so good in some ways, but in many ways they were about family and honor and the satisfaction of hard work. We don't often see examples of that mindset any more.

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