I watched last year’s Red River Rivalry from my dad’s San Antonio hospital room. It was his second weeklong hospitalization in a couple of years due to fluid buildup in his lungs. My husband and oldest son were also there, and like the fans at the Cotton bowl, just on a much smaller scale, we crowded into his room and watched the Longhorns beat the Sooners. He requested strawberry ice cream to celebrate, and my husband found some in the small cafe in the hospital lobby. I fed it to him since he was feeling pretty tired, and we said goodbye with hopes and plans for his discharge from the hospital and reuniting at our niece’s upcoming wedding.

Robert had some meetings after church the next day, so I decided to use the afternoon for a trip to Barton Creek Mall to look for a dress for Maisie’s wedding at Dillard’s.

My dad would have approved. He loved Dillard’s.

My drive was interrupted by a call from my sister, Melissa, wanting to give an update on my dad. We were all taking our shifts with him, and they had moved him to a more critical care floor because his demand for oxygen was increasing. Even though it didn’t necessitate an urgent response, I turned around, drove home, packed an overnight bag, and called Robert to tell him I was on my way back to San Antonio. He canceled the rest of his meetings to join me and we were driving south on I35 within 20 minutes.

Once we were in San Antonio, we needed to make a quick stop at my dad’s apartment to get a couple of things, but as we pulled into the complex, my brother called with an urgent “Don’t stop, Mel. Come straight to the hospital. He’s fading.” That twelve minute drive from his apartment to the hospital was an eternity of tears and prayers and urgency. Robert dropped me off at the main entrance, and I ran to his floor to find my brother and sister waiting outside of his room.

In a mixture of naiveté and denial, I did not understand the resuscitating doctor’s words as he came to tell us they had not been successful. I thought he was telling us they had cleaned him up so that we would have a few moments with him before he actually died. When I gave this interpretation to Robert as he found us waiting in the hallway, my brother and sister were both shaking their heads…”No, Mel. He’s gone.” They had been in the room when the frightening resuscitation began, and they understood the gravity of the situation.

That was one year ago today.

We sat on his hospital bed and held his hands. My brother removed my dad’s UT class ring and gave it to me. We cried. A Methodist chaplain came in and led us in Psalm 23 and The Lord’s Prayer – my dad’s two nightly recitations before going to sleep. We were not expecting to say goodbye that day.

I’m going to post the words I said at his memorial service here for a couple of reasons. First, I want to preserve them here for myself and my kids. Second, I want you to know a little bit about him and thereby a little about me. For added context, my mom died three years prior, but they had been divorced for almost 50 years, and I hadn’t spoken to her in over 20. My dad was really the only parent we had…

Good Morning. I’m Melanie, Dee’s firstborn. Thank you so much for coming to help us remember him today. I really miss him, and I really wasn’t expecting to have to say goodbye to him this soon. I tried to talk to him about this day a while back – asked him if he had made any end-of-life decisions. His immediate response was “Your brother knows where my will is.” When I told him I was thinking more about his funeral and burial wishes, like hymns, scriptures, and burial location, he was a little annoyed and said “Melanie, my doctor says I still have 10 good years in me.” That was about 5 years ago.

When people have asked me how my dad was doing in the last few years, my response was often… “He’s a pill. He’s doing really well, but he’s a pill.” It was the phrase that always came to mind because it captured both his faithful pursuit of us kids both for connection also and favors – like making him a favorite meal, or taking him to a favorite restaurant, or helping him buy flowers or jewelry for his latest female crush. “Pill” also captured his high standards, his stubbornness, and his critical lens on life. New clothes never truly fit me unless they had been professionally altered (I actually started lying about this in college), and a coffee maker was not a good coffee maker unless it came from Dillards or Nordstrom (Target was not within his realm of options). He was high maintenance in many ways, and he also never hesitated to try and dictate our political opinions, our fashion choices, the length and color of our hair, or that of our kids.

He could be a hard pill to swallow sometimes, but pills are also oftentimes necessary for our health and well-being. In fact, they can be utterly lifesaving, and my dad was that for our family. He was ornery and he was necessary. He was a center of gravity for us. He expected to be a constant presence in our lives in a way that held us together and demonstrated love in the only way he knew how. His home was our home base. As a divorced dad of young kids, he took us home with him every weekend, took us out for dinner once a week, and took us to Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, and church. He moved us into and out of college dorms and apartments, came to visit us in our various homes in California, Colorado, and Massachusetts.

He wanted traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings. Despite being a single man for most of his life, he went to the trouble of decorating his home for each holiday and contacting us about when we would gather and what food he expected to be on the menu. Food that we would cook, of course, unless it was one of his specialties like microwaved Velveeta+Rotel queso. It was only in the last couple of years that we were finally able to talk him in to giving gift cards and out of buying multiple, expensive Christmas gifts for every person in our immediate family which us girls would end up doing most of the shopping for.

So yes, he could be a pill, but we needed a stable parent and he was it. I actually don’t think he would even be offended by me calling him a pill. It was his sign of life and vigor. I think he prided himself in it – felt entitled to it as the patriarch. 

But there was one thing he was not at all prideful about. My dad carried a lot of shame about being divorced. He told me this directly a handful of times through the years. He was a good, traditional, religious, and moral man who wanted to do things the right way, and one divorce did not fit into that framework, let alone two. I could often look past demanding, critical, and hurtful interactions with him because of the raw and vulnerable moments we had over his shame.

More than 25 years ago, my husband and I encouraged my dad to join a Sunday School class here at Coker Methodist. He was reluctant because of his travel schedule and because he was not married. Somehow, perfect attendance and a wife were prerequisites in his mind. He finally joined the Becomers class, but he would opt out of their social events. He would tell us things like “My Sunday School Class is having a progressive dinner or a Superbowl party or whatever…, but I’m not going.” When we would ask him why he would say, “Because I’m not married.” As much as we tried to persuade him that being married was not required, and that no one would think it odd that he was showing up to a Sunday School event without a wife, he remained very reluctant. 

But you won him over, Becomers Class. You kept inviting him, including him, calling him, texting him, taking him to lunch or coffee, giving him rides to church, visiting him in the hospital, and so much more. It was such a blessing to him and to us kids.

As I thought about what I wanted to say today, a phrase from the Bible kept coming to mind –  “despising the shame.” It comes from the book of Hebrews, chapter 12:1-2

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

When Jesus went to the cross for us, he was taking on the consequence for our sin, which was death. The only way for us to be forgiven and made acceptable to God was for God himself – in the incarnate body of Jesus – to become the atoning blood sacrifice for our sin. The verses say that while he endured the cross for us, he also “despised” its associated shame. Jesus had nothing to be ashamed of, but he took on the shame that accompanies sin, and he despised it – or looked down on, scorned it, and showed contempt for it. This means that not only did Jesus take on the death that we deserved, but he also took on the shame that we feel because of our sin in a “bring it on” kind of way because the joy of resurrection was just beyond it.

My dad and I had many conversations about the grace and forgiveness that Jesus made possible for him at the cross, and I know he believed that, but I never got the sense that he experienced much freedom from his guilt and shame here on earth. I am so grateful for Coker and for his Becomers Sunday School class (and for several other friends and colleagues) for helping to convince him by your love and acceptance that Jesus really did forgive him.

Thank you.