While I Have You Here

Today would be my father's 99th birthday, if he were still here, earthside, with us. That's him, second from the right, Eli Theron Cox. Everybody called him Theron, and nobody pronounced it the same way. I spend days like these thinking about the loved one I would be celebrating if they hadn't joined our family, heavenside, and today I've definitely been thinking about my dad.

Back on Memorial Day, I gathered a bouquet of memories for these heavenside loved ones, and suggested that offering memories to their loved ones might provide more comfort than the traditional physical blooms we tend to have delivered at doorsteps or leave on gravestones to wither and dry, and I asked some questions: Why is it that we wait to bring up these memories? Why do we store them away without a word until the people who shared them with us aren't around before we move to memorialize and eulogize and reminisce? I determined to do better -- to set some goals to share the memories that fill my head before I'm forced to take them with me heavenside and leave the remembering to the youngsters.

It’s rubbish, really. Why do we wait to express how we feel about people? Do we think they might do something horrendous to change our estimation? Do we think it better to hedge our bets and wait until the end? Wait until it’s safe?

No. It’s not at all that complicated.

We wait because we don’t know we’re waiting for the end. We all carry on as if we’re going to live forever, even though we know, with certainty, that each and every one of us will, at some point, die. We ignore it like a teenager who's been asked to take out the trash. We put in our earbuds and block it out, because we can’t go about the business of living if we’re thinking about dying. But then someone dies, and we're slapped in the face by the sudden severity of their absence, and we don't know what to do with all these feelings we have for them. Did they know we loved them? Were they aware they made us laugh? Had we ever thought to say thanks for what they'd done for us?

A few weeks ago, I heard a figure mentioned in the news -- the number of lives lost to the Covid-19 pandemic had surpassed 6 million people worldwide. Six million. I had to think about that number for a while. It’s unfathomable. Incomprehensible. I haven’t fully grasped what it means to lose one person. How does the earth continue to orbit under the weight of grief of the remaining loved ones of six million people? It is a heavy burden the earth is shouldering.

I am just one ordinary individual. What I do doesn't matter much in the scope of things, but I was serious about setting some goals in this regard, and if I type them on my screen and send them out into the ether, perhaps any of you who may read them will help to hold me accountable to my word--

Goal One: I spend my days interviewing college students for a specific purpose, so I ask specific questions, but even though the interview is for a specific reason, those questions spark very interesting conversations. Between today and next July 19th, in honor of what would have been my father's 100th year, I plan to record 100 memories of him and the stacks of questions I wish I could ask him if he were here. By sharing these with you, I'm hoping that some of these questions will spark questions you would like to ask -- and I'm hoping that the person you want to ask them of is still around to give you some answers, because if I've learned anything from losing parents early, it's that you should ask the questions while you can. Don't be the teenager with the earbuds and the overflowing trashcan. You don't have forever to ask the questions. And if you are of mature age, like me, perhaps you could proactively answer these questions for your loved ones who haven't yet removed the earbuds and don't know what to ask you. I'm hoping my questions will help.

Goal Two: I have had the privilege of giving the eulogy, or life sketch, for several of my loved ones at this point. I hate it. It's the hardest thing in the world. Why? Because it forces me to write down all the things I wish I would've said, all the questions I wish I would've asked, but now it's all too late and only by the grace of God do they get to peek into the service and hear what's said about them. So, I'm going to start sharing with the living the things I appreciate about them. I'm not going to wait until it's too late. I'm going to write down the funny stories, or tell them in the hall at church or work. I'm going to tell them while I have them here. Some of the stories I have to tell are about people who are departed, and I'll share those stories so their descendants know something about them they might not otherwise. Who knows? Maybe it's one of their questions, and I have the answer.

My dad had a complicated life, but those complications made him compassionate and understanding and mindful of others. As a child, he just wanted to be a cowboy and ride his horse in the foothills of Wolverine with his Cox cousins, but there was a draft, and a war, and then a wife, and a family to raise and a farm to work and cows to milk and testimonies to grow. I wouldn't have to ask my dad, "What did you want to be when you grew up," because I knew the answer to that one. But I would love nothing more than to sit down with him on the back porch steps and ask him to tell me about his favorite horse, or how their family made it through the Great Depression, or how he found the words to speak at his dad's funeral when he was only in his twenties. These are the questions I should have asked while I had him here.

Let's not make that mistake. Let's ask while we have them here.