My Dad

            My dad passed away last night (Pearl Harbor Day) after a long battle with Parkinson's Disease and diabetes.  As I suppose is often said in situations like this, we knew his death was imminent but we just didn't think it would be "today."

            In a moment of quiet this morning, I decided to continue my regular reading through the New Testament, with my current "reading emphasis" being to understand the link between body and soul.  This latest emphasis is something I started almost 14 months ago, beginning with the start of Matthew and, each day, reading the next paragraph or two.  So who could predict that on this day - just hours after my dad's passing - I would find today's reading starting with the following paragraph:

 

"For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit."

II Corinthians 5:1-5

 

            My dad loved to pitch horseshoes and was a professional horseshoe pitcher in the State of Oregon (a profession that requires a day job!).  But my dad's Parkinson's slowly began taking away his coordination and strength to the point where he could no longer pitch.  He picked up bowling and found it easier, and enjoyed that for many years but eventually, after too many falls, he had to give that up entirely.  I'm sure my dad longed for that future "new body" that Paul describes in the paragraph above, though I certainly don't remember my dad complaining about his progressing disability.  But he surely always imagined he would get back to horseshoe pitching someway somehow.  Those well-worn regulation horseshoes might still be in the trunk of the car.

            In my work to develop medical devices that can restore some lost function due to the progression of a disability, I am sometimes reminded that whatever we do is only a temporary fix.  Inevitably our bodies give out.  Sure:  exercise, eat healthy...do all those good things...but eventually that "earthly tent we live in is taken down."  Eventually the progressive degradation of my dad's body even took away his ability to enjoy watching sports - a lifelong passion fueled and often fulfilled by frequent bouts as a sports writer for various newspapers throughout his lifetime.

            I'm sure I got my love of statistics from my dad, who used to keep stats on every basketball and baseball game he ever listened to.  I bet he has written down somewhere, in one of his ever-present notebooks, the total number of times in his life that he tossed a 2lb, 10oz bent piece of metal toward a waiting post 40 feet away.  I think I also got my love of writing from my dad as well.  Those two things have certainly served me well in my profession over the years.

            Interestingly, I think I can also attribute my somewhat unconscious sense that "it's a good idea to read through the Bible" from my dad as well.  I still recall him having us kids read through some genealogical passage somewhere in I Samuel and it was tortuous and boring, but we came across some guy named "Dodo" and it made it tolerable!  But those concepts somehow stick in your mind and shape your thinking as you get older.  So, you could say that it was his influence that brought me to happen to be reading the paragraph above on this particular day. 

            Some just see coincidences and can calculate the odds of every event.  They see all of these coincidences as logically random events.  But my statistics aren't that good - I still allow for some miracles here and there!