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| My wife took this photo. It perfectly captures Dad's good humor and impishness. |
July 27, 1932 - September 6, 2016
My father passed away unexpectedly this past Tuesday. He had been in and out of hospitals a lot lately. He'd gladly tell you he'd been hospitalized 23 times in 24 months. Every time he experienced anything happening in his body that didn't feel right, he'd call my step-sister or his brother Bruce if he was in Florida, or an ambulance and off to the hospital he'd go. Dad was far from being a hypochondriac, but he knew he was in his 80s, lived alone, and didn't want to die of self-neglect.
Each time the facility would run its battery of tests, give him a clean bill of health, and kick him loose two days later. This visit was no different, in the beginning. Dad went into ER on Labor Day with a bad case of chills and fatigue that wound up being a pneumonia that had set in deeply over the weekend. But then we were told that an underlying lung disease was complicating things. Shockingly, it was the first time anyone in the family - including Dad - had learned he had a lung disease.
In the end, nothing would bring his blood-oxygen up to survivable levels, and his body shut down very quickly. I was sitting with him in the hospital, talking to him clearly and easily at 11:30 Monday night. Just before 7:30 Tuesday morning, he was gone.
The blessing is that it was quick. The curse is that it caught us all by total surprise, tripling our grief.
Here, for the record and for anyone who couldn't be at the funeral, is my eulogy. I feel like I failed to do justice to the man, missing any childhood anecdotes completely, but Dad never really talked about his life growing up. So I worked with what I had.
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| Dad, circa 1945. |
Believe it or not, there was a time
in his life when Cliff Raymond had hair. This young, redheaded, freckle-faced
boy the entire town of Marion called “Sonny” loved to play and loved to eat. He
tried to join the Army more than once during World War 2 and again when the
Korean Conflict arrived, but was always turned down due to a childhood illness
that punctured both of his eardrums.
He wound up marrying his high
school sweetheart, Jane, and they moved away from Marion and struck out on
their own life and adventures. The man you know as a devout lay minister with a
passion to live and preach the Gospel wasn’t always this way. Christ was an
afterthought early in their lives. Dad smoked, swore freely, and both Mom and
Dad liked to drink more than they should at one of the local watering holes.
The problem was that they would
drink too much and when that happened, well … Jane got a little flirty and Cliff
got jealous. It was a bad combination. There were never any barroom brawls, but
there was plenty of fighting with each other once they got home. Dad confided
in me just recently that if Jane hadn’t died at 33, they probably would have
divorced.
Cliff and Jane tried to have
children. Oh, how they tried. If everything had worked like it was supposed to
work, I would have been one of six siblings … all brothers! But Mom suffered
from Juvenile Diabetes (what they now call Type 1), and it made pregnancies
extremely difficult. She had one miscarriage, two of my brothers were
stillborn, and two others lived for just a few days. They are buried next to
her in the Marion Cemetery.
So they tried to adopt. They went
through all the applications, all the background checks, all the rigorous
agency interviews, and at the final step, they were denied. Jane was livid. Violence
was about to ensue when Dad, who had been clued in on the reason, simply told
Mom, “I’ll tell you later,” and got her out of there. They had been turned down for adoption at the very
end because the doctor doing the physical on Mom’s diabetic condition told the
agency she would be dead within five years.
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| The fam, early in my life. I inherited that gap in Mom's teeth. |
Well, the joke was on that doctor.
Jane lived for *10* more years and gave birth to me. I was born on a Friday
morning – just in time for Captain Kangaroo – and taken directly to church on
Sunday to be dedicated. Because Mom and Dad were Baptists; had been all their
lives. And Baptists – despite the name – don’t baptize babies. We could only be
dedicated to the Lord until we were old enough to make our own decision about
baptism.
Soon after, Mom and Dad became more
serious about their faith. And Dad found a steady job as a “Storekeeper” with
the State of Michigan. He worked with office supplies, inventory, and
requisitions for every government office in the State. He created new inventory
and reorder systems … that other people took credit for. But eventually he
became the Head Storekeeper and the job offered enough benefits and pay that we
were able to move to a better home, even while Jane’s health failed. We moved
to the house that Dad would spend the rest of his life in, and Jane passed away
in September of 1969.
Dad and I did everything together
over the next year. He took me to my first baseball game (the Tigers lost to the Royals),
and we would “rough it” in a camper that fit on the bed of a pickup truck. As
we’d drive, a bug would splat on the windshield and Dad would call out in a
challenging voice, “I bet you won’t have the guts to do *that* again!” I’m
pretty sure that’s where I picked up my love of puns.
One day we had stopped at
a roadside park overlooking Lake Michigan, and there was a sign posted that
said, “Danger: Overhanging Cliff.” Dad couldn’t resist. Somehow he managed to
climb up to the top of that sign, leaned over it, and mugged a menacing look
while I snapped the photo. It was a fantastic picture and a beautiful,
spontaneous moment.
And then we left that camera on the
bumper of the pickup as we drove away. Never saw it again. But I still have
that picture (in my mind).
Dad loved cooking on the grill. One
night I brought a friend from school home unexpectedly and asked if he could
stay for dinner. Dad said, “Sure!” and threw another steak on the grill. He
definitely enjoyed using his gift of hospitality. Later his “chicken on the
grill” became something of a legend among us family members. Colonel Sanders
had nothing on Pop’s finger lickin’ chicken.
Finally, feeling so alone I would
find him crying late at night, Dad began to date again and before too long remarried
a widow, Hazel Dast, in February of 1971. Widow women were to become an
important part of his life, later.
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| Mom Hazel and Dad, circa 2008. |
Hazel became the great love of his
life. Dad doted on her. Mom gave Dad a sense of stability, a profoundly
delicious set of meals each night, and a circle of friends he never had and he
gave her everything he could. Dad loved Hazel’s cooking. Her banana bread
recipe was so good she had to make extra and freeze them for friends, and no one in the
family has yet been able to duplicate that taste.
When Mom had made a
particularly good meal, Pop would sit back and utter a phrase that I’m sure
many of you have heard. He was “sufficiently suffoncified,” but I’ll bet many
of you don’t know the whole phrase, which Dad would pronounce to signify such a
good meal he’d have to go sleep it off: “I am
sufficiently suffoncified so that any further intake would be offensive to my
most fastidious tastes.”
Cliff and Hazel loved to travel. They
went to Hawaii with their best friends, and went camping a lot, almost everywhere across the U.S.,
really – turning that tiny pickup bed camper into a 24-foot fifth-wheeler, one
upgrade at a time. They loved camping, fishing, deer hunting, and nature in
general.
When Dad retired from his job with
the State of Michigan, Hazel and Cliff rented a campsite in Texas and began to
winter there, eventually selling that fifth wheel camper and buying an actual
retirement home in the Country Palms RV Park in McAllen, Texas. They loved the
people of the park. They loved crossing into Mexico - just an hour away - for cheap vanilla and would
always bring home several bottles for friends. They loved the park “jam
sessions” and Dad would often play his harmonica and sing. He became known for
his outspoken faith, and eventually the park asked him if he would become the
“Park Pastor,” which he gladly accepted. He and Mom would visit shut-ins, make
the rounds of the park so they knew everyone, and Dad would get to preach on
Sundays.
That desire to care for people
continued when they decided to stop going to Texas and returned to Michigan for
good – of course even before this part of their life Cliff and Hazel had become
great Sunday School teachers here at Judson and would often hold card parties
at their home. And they continued to visit shut-ins. Eventually a young pastor
named Zachary Bartels was hired to serve here and he brought Cliff alongside
him in many of the church ministries, the two becoming good friends. Soon Dad
was offered a “license to preach” as a Lay Minister in the American Baptist
denomination. How Dad enjoyed that
honor! He occasionally filled the pulpit here, and would preach periodically at
a homeless shelter, and he loved loved loved every minute of it.
Then, in late Spring of 2006,
something happened that would change the lives of Cliff and Hazel forever. A
convertible full of teenagers pulled out directly in front of Mom and Dad like
they weren’t even there. Dad T-Boned the car at 50 miles per hour. Guardian
angels must have been heavily in abundance that day as no one was killed,
though bones were broken and lives were imperiled.
Neither Cliff nor Hazel were
ever the same again. Hazel eventually became housebound, and Dad became her
24-hour caregiver. For five years they led a sheltered, slowly declining life,
until Hazel received her promotion to Heaven in midsummer of 2011.
Dad had come to the Internet late
in life. He didn’t even own a computer until he was in his 60s, and took the
leap onto the Internet at age 70. Well, it was dialup so maybe it was just a
small hop. After Mom passed, Dad discovered “chat rooms.” He fell in with a
bunch of beautiful people online who loved gardening, God, and gabbing about
what was going on in their lives. Every day Dad would send this group of
“e-friends” a Scripture verse and a joke, then he’d post a photo he’d taken of
something pretty. He loved the comments he got, and I think those people saved
my Dad’s life, giving him something to look forward to doing every day.
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| Dad with his "harem." |
About this time he also began to
hang out with his other “widow women” whom he and others laughingly referred to
as his “harem.” You know who you are – Jean, Jerre, Jeanie, and Donna – and I
need to tell you that not only did Dad depend upon you for comfort and company,
but he always looked forward to helping take you places, clearing up your
“honey-do” lists, and the card parties. He loved the food you'd make for him, and loved that you gave him the comfort and space to lay down and take naps in the middle of your get-togethers.
Dad was never a social person, never a joiner; but he
fiercely loved spending time with his family and friends.
Dad told me that Mom wanted him to
travel after she passed. She said he should go see the places the two of them
would never get to. The year that Mom passed Dad and I took a cruise to Alaska,
and soon after I took an early retirement from the Postal Service, Dad and I
began to travel in earnest. We went back to Alaska … we drove down to Florida,
all the way
to the Keys, and back home. We drove all the way across the
northeast U.S., into Canada’s New Brunswick and on to Nova Scotia, including Prince
Edward Island where we shopped at the “Anne of Green Gables” store. Eventually
we went to Ireland together in the Spring of 2014.
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| Our road trip to Key West. |
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| Ironically, we were in Ireland. |
That was his favorite trip, and he
took SO MANY pictures. We had rented a car and I was driving – from the right
hand side of the vehicle, on the left hand side of the road -- which made him extremely nervous -- and I kept hearing
Dad gasp at how beautiful the countryside was, followed quickly by him saying,
“Don’t look! Keep your eyes on the road!” We always talked about that trip, and
about maybe going back one day.
I always told Dad that we had a
symbiotic relationship. He couldn’t travel without my help, and I couldn’t
travel without his money.
Dad, of course, was not perfect. He
had his flaws. The word “saw” was a tool
in his workshop, and not the past tense of “to see.” If he wanted to tell you
about something he saw, it was always, “Oh yeah, I seen that the other day.” But
that wasn’t his only crime against grammar. The man never met an apostrophe he
couldn’t use inappropriately. Plurals
became possessives, and possessives became plurals.
And he bore the cultural prejudices
of growing up in the 30s and 40s … always barely disguising a mistrust of those
with a different skin color, especially if you owned a motel and were charging
more than he thought you should. But he was also trying to get past that with
help from others. He knew better. And he knew that he needed to do better.
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| Dad at my son's wedding last August. |
And Dad loved attention. Oh, let us
not deny that. If you were a stranger and met Cliff, you’d know his entire
health history, where he’d traveled, and what he’d seen for the last two years
within five minutes. He and I had several arguments about the proper way to
meet new people. “It’s really not all about you, Dad. Not yet.”
Dad should have sold insurance,
because in most everything he did, there was a “backup plan.” He carried TWO
wallets. He wore a belt *and* suspenders. He would put Downy fabric softener in
the washing machine, and a Bounce dryer sheet in the dryer. He had a digital
clock on his DVR and an old analog clock with a battery sitting right next to
it in case the power went out.
He went to bed about 7:30 at night.
He’d be back up at midnight checking his email and Facebook. That’s right, Dad
joined Facebook and proceeded to violate nearly every social convention you
could think of. He posted terribly intimate personal details … on status
updates of people he didn’t even know because he saw you had left a comment and he
wanted you to know about his thing. Dad hijacked more status updates than an air
marshal could stop. For him, Facebook was just a different version of eMail.
And he never understood that the entire world could see what he was writing. If
he did understand, he just didn’t care.
He’d get up at 5:00 in the morning,
and if you weren’t ready to eat by 6am, he began setting the table for
breakfast – LOUDLY. He’d bang the pots and pans while he heated the water for
coffee. He's not using pots and pans to heat water for coffee, but he'd bang them. Then he’d apologize and ask if he woke you when you came out of the
bedroom.
Dad was always a creative type. He
went to Ferris State University to study art but dropped
out because he
couldn’t afford it. I have a lovely charcoal drawing of a still life with fruit
in my home. Throughout his life, he would create stuff. He took some surplus
telephone wire he’d found and made tiny animal sculptures with it. He took horseshoe
nails and turned them into cross necklaces. Some of you may have one. The bolo
tie you saw him wearing today was one of his own creations. He made his own
greeting cards on a computer program; some of you received those.
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| Dad and I in 2013. |
He was well known for giving new life to
old mechanical items, salvaging them for another few years of use. His fixes
tended to be ugly and look cheap, but the stuff worked and kept on working and
he hardly ever charged for the repairs.
Dad once wrote a novel. I bet most
of you didn’t know that. It was a Cowboys and Indians story. He only showed it
to me once, and he never tried to have it published.
Both Dad and Mom loved to read. Mom
would read romance novels, Dad would read westerns and historical fiction. He
has pretty much the entire library of Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey at home. In
fact, he pretty much has an entire library. There are bookshelves overstuffed
in almost every room and if the house ever caught fire, it would burn for days.
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| Dad, in one of the last pictures ever taken of him, with newest great-granddaughter, Bailey. |
I cannot wrap this up without
mentioning his love of a bargain. Getting quality merchandise for cheap
“pleases me old Scottish ancestors,” he would say. This led to his love of yard
sales. He and Mom held some doozies in their day. He got to be so good at
setting up and organizing yard sales that he told me lately he could have made a second
career out of being a consultant for that. And it didn’t matter where you were
going or what time you had to be there, if he saw a sign advertising a yard
sale, you betcha he was going to stop.
I think he and Mom furnished at
least two rooms of their home with yard sale merchandise; if not furnished, at
least heavily decorated. “Yard Sale-ing” was one of his favorite hobbies and one
which age and time could not diminish. If there’s a yard sale on the way to the
cemetery, be ready to stop for a few minutes.
Toward the end of his life, he
became more impetuous in his decision-making. Perhaps he knew he didn’t have
many years left. Three years ago, he calls me up on a Tuesday late in September
and says, “I’m tired of winter in Michigan. I’m ready to be a snowbird again; this
time in Florida. Could you see if you can find a place for me?”
On Thursday I get a call: “I think
I found a place. Could you look it over and see what you think?”
On Saturday, the call comes in: “So
I made an offer on the place.” Monday we make travel reservations, fly to
Florida on Thursday, buy a mobile home in Zephyrhills on Friday.
A year later, I get an email: “If I
buy a second trailer here, would you move in?” Before I can even talk seriously
to my wife about this, I get a second email the next day: “So I bought the
place.” (insert gesture of frustration)
But my Dad was perhaps most famous
for being early. If you asked him to arrive at 10 a.m., he’d be there by 9:15. If
he said he would pick you up at 7 o’clock, you had better be ready by 6:30. The
man was notorious for this. Even in death. His doctor told him his health was
good enough he wouldn’t die for another 8-10 years. We should have known; Dad arrived
early.
Let me close by saying that if Cliff
were standing here, looking back on his life, he would say he was “sufficiently
suffoncified.”
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| In Waterford, Ireland. |
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Dad's obituary can be read here.
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Mark's Musings is published on an occasional basis but that may change without notice. This blog is considered to be a digital periodical publication and is filed as such with the U.S. Library of Congress; ISSN 2154-9761. There are never any endings, only beginnings in disguise.
