Revised
The best way that I know how to describe Pa is to say that nobody sucked the marrow from the bones of life like Pa. Sure, he sometimes said inappropriate things at inappropriate times. He once stripped down to his purple briefs at the lunch table in order to show me his fresh bypass scars. I'm sure most of us in this room have similar stories. Though hopefully yours doesn't end with him in his underwear like mine.
But between these sometimes embarrassing moments lived a man with constant desire to learn, to experience and to live. He bounced from one hobby to another, always learning, always doing. Whether it was making cedar chests for the grandkids, reporting the local weather to the news station after tracking it on his own weather station, fishing for days on end, training his dog to jump through hoops or any of his other countless pursuits, the man just lived his life like no one else I've ever met.At 91, he was still welding and crawling under his house to check the pipes. At 93, he was using a cell phone, driving, answering email and staying active with the Masons. I even saw him on Facebook once.
I'm grateful for the last time I saw Pa. It was just after Thanksgiving. We stopped for a visit and dropped off some of my sister's chairs for him to recane. He didn't get a chance to start that project. His health faded fast. Or maybe it just seemed fast to me. I don't get home very often.
I always figured Pa would go to sleep in his own bed one night and just not wake up the next morning---unexpected and gentle, which is about the best that any of us could hope for. I still wish that could have happened for him, but I think the ending he got was nice all the same. Pa was surrounded by love, visited by family, aware that his presence on this earth made a difference. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll find my end to be similar.
