My Family 4

Since Suz and I have been married, my dad has been the great sage in our life. He is who we call. He is the one who knows. When I was extreme in a relationship issue with someone, he would balance me out. This is despite the fact that the past few years have been rough ones for him.

After 15 years of directing the jail ministry, he realized he was spending so much time raising support that he didn't have much energy left to have joy in his job. So he quit. He took on sales job, but as surely as the Ohio economy has proved it's instibility, the companies he worked for bottomed out. At one place he was one of the leading salesmen, even though he was new. But because he was new, he was one of the first to go when the company had to cut corners. He eventually just started his own carpentry business that was in it's infancy when he was diognosed. He told us a few months ago that he thinks the cancer started because he was stressed out about work. You see, he was the hardest worker I know, but when you get back into the job market at 50, and you live in Ohio, life is tough.

So I miss him. I've had about ten things come to my mind where my first instinct is to call dad and ask him. Now, I just have to take the wisdom that he did pass onto me and remember where I came from. The week before he died I was in the Tuesday "leaders meeting" at church and I got a call from my mom who was crying.

"The doctors told us today that the chemo isn't working."

Me stunned.

"They are giving him a few months."

I cried in the back room of the auditorium for about 20 minutes. When I came back to the meeting, it was pretty obvious what the news was. The guys prayed and cried with me.

We went back to Akron that Friday. He didn't look like he was real. He was so skinny and so pale. His breathing was hard and his voice had changed. My dad still had his humor, though it was tempered with the seriousness of the situation. "We'll just have to walk through this togther here" he said.

The next day Suzanne, Jaden and my mom where there with him in the morning. He told us he loved us, he was proud of us. He said that it's amazing how you push and pull and fight with your kids to try to get them to do the right thing and then they leave the home and "sparkle." The pain of the cancer was overcoming him, and the morphine took away his ability to concentrate and communicate, so told us that he was feeling that he was going to "Step out the door" soon (I found out later that had asked my mother that morning if that would be ok). He asked us if he had done anything to hurt us that we need to make better, we told him no and then he, in typical "Dennis" fashion, said "well let me pull out my list for you."

Later that day the whole family was together including his two sisters and his brother-in-law. He made a beautiful speech that was so emotional, I can't even get myself to write much about it. "fifty-four years old!" He said in disbelief. He ended by telling us that we need to keep our trust in God and some of us need to trust God in new ways. He looked at his sister (who isn't a Christ follower) and said "right Margaret?" The last thing he talked about was something his business partner Alan told him about a week before he passed. Alan was at one of their houses that they were renovating and selling and he couldn't figure something out, so he went outside and thought about it and decided to think "what would Dennis do." My dad then looked at my little brother Kevin who is 13 and said, "there will probably be many times in your life where you need to think 'what would dad do'."

I kissed him goodbye as we went home that night and his last words to me told me that he loved me so much.

He passed at about 4:20am that morning. I got there with Patrick at about 4:30. He was gone.

The visiting hours were amazing. We stood in line for over four and a half hours and shook peoples hands and gave hugs. There were guys who my dad had led to Christ in jail. So many people who were affected by his life. It was overwhelming. The funeral director said it was the largest crowd he had seen since he'd been there. But what got me the most where the countless men who considered my dad to be their mentor at some point in their life. Like with me, he had taken people under his wing and treated them as family, even though they were strangers at one time. It's an amazing legacy to live up to. So much wisdom. So much love.