“The RoseBouquet”

[Please note: this article is updated from an article written as a Valentine’s tribute before his 86th Birthday in 2001. Right now he has cancer, and if he makes it to February 20th, Dad will be 91 years old).

Dad grew up on a prairie homesteading and didn’t get much of an education. He attended a one-room country schoolhouse nearly eight years, and learned to read and write, and to do a rather stumbling math. His education was mostly in riding as a cowboy, and in fixing machinery in his father’s little workshop shed on the farm. So no, my Dad is not used to sending valentines, and expressing his affection. He feels deeply, but doesn’t really know how to say tender love messages.

But you know, it doesn’t really matter to me any more.

Just a minute. There’s the day he gave me a homemade cutting board for bread. I believe Dad meant that as a love-gift even if he forgot to say the words. This week he decided to give me his car, and pay for the first year’s insurance. There are countless times Dad has fixed kitchen appliances for me, or seen to the furnace, or done the weeding in the garden, so I wouldn’t need to. Dad expresses his love in very practical ways.

I used to be ashamed of my father’s limitations, lowly jobs, and ignorance about worldly things, I have come to appreciate and even love him for who he is since I came home to care for my parents 23 1/2 years ago. Since Mom died, I’m here to look after Dad’s practical needs. Sure, it has been humbling in some ways. Yet enough time has passed so that I can see the benefits.

Dad’s a storyteller in his old age, much as his father was, and though he sometimes mixes up the details when he retells them, his storytelling shows what is really important, and going on in his heart and mind.

A couple of bearded old men came to talk of old times once with Dad. I don’t recall what set him off, but he began to lecture them about some grasp of theology he has, and it sounded like preaching.

With age he is losing his grasp on non-concrete concepts, but that evening it was clear that he’s committed to believing and honouring God; and his heart is on guard against evil and lies - the best Dad knows how.

. He actually has quite a creative, engineering mind, as became obvious when he puttered away in his workshop. That breadboard he gave me for instance, was a long time in the making because he’d observed that the one he’d given me before was of soft wood and tended to splinter. So he’d gone to look for some trees with very hard wood, spent several saw blades in cutting them into plank pieces, glued them together, and trimmed them into one smooth breadboard.

There are other times I’ve seen him problem-solving in action, creating something that solved it, but didn’t exist before. He could invent without knowing that big word.

“Yes, when your heart and mind are guarded for the Lord, no one can steal them. And you get to use them on into your 91st year of life. - Happy Valentine’s Day, Dad!”

Our long cold winters mean that he can’t go for the long walks he used to, so Dad has been spending more time in his recliner doing some light reading, or dozing - even snoring. It’s a rest that he’s earned during all those years when Dad had to work those long, hard 16 hour days, at physical labour, just to support his family and see we all survived to adulthood.

I’m also very grateful that he allows me the freedom to spend my days on the computer looking after a business he cannot understand to reap rewards he cannot see. Nor does he complain when the house only gets cleaned on Saturdays, and I’ve got meal-making down to a light, quick series of steps. We are really quite compatible; divinely coordinated, for sure!

These last nine years especially, God has made us a gift one to the other. I have learned to forgive and love, and he has learned to trust me, and to enjoy the kind of freedom to be himself that his boyhood should have given him. It is an honour and a privilege to care for Dad in these closing weeks and days of his life.

“Dad, I love you and thank God for you!”