A Father’s Day Tribute - HE IS A LEGACY. HE DIDN’T JUST LEAVE ONE.

A NEW LEARNING
Here I am sixty-six years of age and I am remembering my father. I’m glad. He was memorable. Such an ordinary man but unforgettable. He is forgotten to the company for which he worked for forty-five years. He is not thought about within the church he attended for sixty years. I call him to mind often. That makes sense. As time passes, I do things that resemble him sometimes. At ninety-three years of age he was gone one evening last May. I miss his face. I miss him. I am delighted to say that.

A small man at five feet six inches in height, my father had three sons each of whom exceeded his stature. Yet as small boys, we saw him as a big man. How pleasurable it is now to recall that even in our adult years he was large in our hearts. He served in the Canadian Air Force during the Second World War. He and Mom operated a post war coffee shop and a gas service station in a Prairie town. Then believing that opportunity existed in the east, Dad and Mom began again in Ontario and Dad took a factory job. Some years after he retired from his demanding physical work in a furnace manufacturing factory he answered this question. “Why did you keep working so hard at that place?” “I did it for my boys, “he said. Life’s purpose and responsibility was not more complex than that for Dad. Three boys grew up, gained and education and made him proud. We gave him daughters in law whom he loved and six grandchildren and they provided him with nine great grandchildren.

He loved our mother with all his heart for the sixty-five years they were together before he lost her to illness. He encouraged and assisted her entrepreneurial career. He was a man of faith and he was content. He was satisfied with the simple pleasures that a small income afforded to him. He never fulfilled two dreams, a trip to Hawaii and fishing in Alaska. Dad always loved ice cream. When I was six years of age Dad and I walked to an ice cream store. We were no sooner around the block finishing our cones when he said to me, “That tastes like more doesn’t it?” We turned around to acquire two more cones. I was ten years old when Dad operated a commercial crane 130 feet off the ground. He spotted me outside the company fence to which I had peddled my bike to watch him. He looked around and then motioned for me to come through the hole in the fence and I scampered up the long ladder into the cabin of the crane to sit with him until closing time. We remember him jingling coins in his pocket. He whistled familiar songs and we knew the world was good. He could yodel but few people were privileged to hear it.

He inspired my brothers and I to be dedicated Dads and we have sought to model faithful fathering to our sons who are now young dads themselves. They are doing it, perhaps better than we did. Thank you Dad. You live on.

(printed in The Cloverdale Reporter June 19, 2009, http://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/48292882.html)

Edward R. Unruh would have been 94 but is now ageless

A NEW LEARNING - Today would have been my father's 94th birthday. He died in May of 2008 but before he died one of the letters I wrote him was a three page tome seeking to address some the doubt that occasionally crept into his aging mind. Tina his sweetheart and wife for 66 years had passed away five months earlier. Although her memory had failed near the end, and although he was already living alone in his apartment, he was a brave and strong but lonely man. He generally kept his innermost feelings to himself. Here was page one of my letter.

"Dear Dad, I love you so much.

I know that life is more difficult during these years than you or anyone of us imagined it could be for you. Now that I am 65 years old I am very conscious of ageing and what that will mean for Christine and me. I think of you often in your apartment and missing the sweetheart of your life to whom you have been faithful for all these years.

It’s easy to say words about hope and heaven yet hard to find comfort when it feels so lonely. One of the truths that should comfort us is knowing that Jesus has gone ahead of us. He has been here and he has gone home. In fact he said that he was going away to prepare for us a place in His Father’s house where there are many mansions. He promised that he would come again to take us to be with him where he is. Some of us, perhaps you or mom or me or any one of your children and grandchildren may not have to wait for his actual return. We might die. In that way too he will receive us so we can be with him where he is. If we have a twinge of doubt, Jesus said, “You believe in God, Believe also in me.”

I can’t imagine living as long as you Dad. It would mean that I would have another 28 years. During that time, what could happen? I could lose my wife, one of my children, or God forbid, one of my grandchildren. A person could live in fear all the time. That’s why it seems to me that we should rely on the things we know for sure – the things God has said. The Bible is God’s Word. God’s people for centuries have counted on that.

In the book of Job is the story of a man who probably went through more heartache than all of us Unruhs put together. He lost all his children, his property everything. Still he didn’t curse God or turn away. Instead, he wrote some words that help us today. What happens when a believer dies? Job asked that very question and answered it for himself. But I will alter the subject slightly. Job 14:14 If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my hard service I will wait for my renewal to come. 15 You (God) will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made. 16 Surely then you will count my steps but not keep track of my sin. 17 My offences will be sealed up in a bag; you will cover over my sin."