Many years ago, the four of us were in Iowa, on one of Dad’s many “returns to the homeland”, where we learned the virtues of dairy farming, the history of roadside hemp cultivation, and gained the remarkable insight that, but for Iowa, western civilization would, quite simply, cease to exist.
We had been trying to find something or someone in the maze of Iowa corn and identical rural roads, and my brother and I were in the back seat. One of us was always assigned the task of navigating, and had the map folded out in front of them.
My father, of course, was driving, and my mother was in the front seat, getting increasingly concerned by the growing agricultural nature of our surroundings, and the fact that the corn was getting closer and closer to the sides of the car as we proceeded.
Finally, one of us took the initiative to check the map, cross check the route number, and ascertain that we were firmly in the middle of nowhere. Someone suggested this to Dad, showing him the map, and trying to convince him that a U-turn and 30 miles to the East would get us back on track.
After receiving what some would consider a sermon on the infallibility of his internal Iowa cartography, and the fact that he had lived here for years, and could never get lost, he turned to the front of the car and, in the process of taking his next left, which he was certain would arrive us at the front door of our destination, and stated loudly “Driving in Iowa is like riding a bike – I’ll never forget how to find my way around this State. I know this country like the back of my hand!”
And, true to his word, he took his next left ……. directly into a nearby cornfield.
Now some may see this as an example of stubbornness. You wouldn’t be wrong. In fact, my father may have been one of the most stubborn men you would ever meet – once he made up his mind to do something, nothing could deter him. Presented with a compromise regarding a course he had set, he would get a look on his face and a set to his eyes that heralded a fruitless attempt to divert him from his goal.
However, in my father, as in all of us, this personality trait had an alter-ego. While stubbornness carries with it what some may deem a negative connotation, the Superman persona to this Clark Kent appearance was my father’s refusal to surrender.
He never backed away from a challenge, and he never compromised. His sense of integrity and his commitment to what was right was simply infallible; his honesty and steadiness, coupled with his absolute conviction in everything that he did, were central to who and what my father was. The longer I live and work, and the more people I encounter in life, the more and more remarkable do I consider this.
You see, my father didn’t know how to be beaten. It’s not that he never lost, or that he didn’t like to lose -- he simply wasn’t acquainted with the concept of being defeated. During his life and career, this sense of purposefulness, this refusal to acknowledge the possibility of being beaten, saw him, and us, through countless difficult and seemingly hopeless times.
In the darkness that life can present, his dedication and absolute conviction to success and perseverance were always a light that outlined a pathway to redemption and hope.
As difficult times bring to the surface of each individual the traits that carried them through or weighed them down during life, this survivalism – stubbornness, as I called it earlier – emerged in this, his final battle.
From the day of his diagnosis until the day he died, there was about my father a palpable sense of resistance and struggle – inside himself he fought a battle more difficult and more dreadful than anything he had ever faced before. And in this fight, as never before, he persevered – a truer exhibition of courage and dedication than any that had come before.
Whenever I called or visited, this strength was there, on the surface as plainly as in the core of his person, maintaining his will to fight, his determination to succeed, and his constant, stalwart ethic of courage and strength. The answer to the constant inquiry of his condition was never that he wasn’t feeling good, or that he was a little off – it was always “Feeling great”, “Doing better today”, or “Getting better every day.”
In the end, my father succumbed to his illness. But, even after years of fighting, and months of constant battle, he was not defeated. In this, his final battle, those of us that knew him well choose to think that the peace he has finally achieved was his election by right, rather than an imposition by powers outside his control. He was never beaten by this disease - no ground was ever ceded, and no quarter shown. His time was now and he was ready to be at peace.
During our lives, my father always attempted to impart some portion of the knowledge he had accumulated to his children.
Sometimes, this knowledge was the definition of a “frog-strangler” (a heavy downpour) the meaning of “watering one’s foot” (a euphemism for something one might do in a men’s room) or the quickest route between destinations in Iowa (which, apparently, is often OVER rather than AROUND the ever-present cornfields). My mother suggests in retrospect that he may have missed his true calling as a teacher – indeed, his breadth of knowledge and desire to share that knowledge with others was always evident.
Sometimes, his knowledge was received, and his teachings appreciated. Other times, as in any normal father-son or father-daughter relationship, his knowledge was discounted, or altogether ignored, by those of us who, remarkably by the mere age of 2, already far surpassed the mere mortal intelligence of dear ole dad.
Whether my father knows it or not – and I believe he does -- he succeeded more in his last days than in any that preceeded in teaching not just me, but my brothers, sister, wife, mother, and anyone that had the privilege of being in his presence, the meaning of perservearance, the value of courage, and the beauty of love.
It might not have escaped anyone's notice that today is father's day. While some may mark this coincidence as unhappy, I choose to think of it as an opportunity -- not to mourn my father's passing or to grieve his loss, but to take from his death what we may never have learned from his life: the true value of perseverance and courage. Father's day is a day to honor one's father and to mark the invaluable contributions that these wonderful people make to our lives. It is a day to reflect on the value of their love and sacrifices, and should make no difference whether they're with us or not.
For those of you who knew my father in his last days, this ceremony is more a celebration of his struggle and an acknowledgement of his extraordinary resilience than it is a mourning of his passing. Even for those who knew him in his healthier days, none can but agree that my father would want us to celebrate his life and his contributions to this world on this day.
I could stand here and tell you all stories about my father for hours. I could tell you he was one of the great ones, that he was a good, honest, solid and dependable man. But you all know that.
Instead, I'm going to leave by asking you to take home the lesson my father would have wanted to come from his life: Nothing you do can stop life from trying to get you down - but never let anything life throws at you keep you from always standing back up, as the true measure of courage is not how many fights you win, but how many you simply refuse to lose.
