Remembering James Earl O'Donnell--19 April 1942-9 December 1992

It is December 9, 2008. The sixteenth anniversary of father's death. I have spent a bunch of time at hospitals the last few days and will do so again tomorrow. 

I had hoped to post a bit of a tribute to dad, but I think he would be pleased at a few things I learned from him that are very regularly put into practice. For one, he had a great respect for his elders and was a beacon of light for my late maternal grandmother, invalid in the nursing home. Dad would enter the place and smiles would come out because he treated the people at the home with respect and as real, valuable human beings. He would go to visit my grandmother at the nursing home on his lunch hour on occasion, and when he did he would almost always call ahead and have the staff get her in her chair and up and ready to go. 

Dad would enter the place, take grandma outside and have a smoke. I can't tell you what a treat that was for that woman, who smoked most of her life but then after a series of strokes was unable to move her limbs voluntarily, or even speak. He would get her outside on the porch of that nursing home, light up a cigarette, and place it on her lips. Some may be offended by that, but the woman couldn't move, couldn't speak, and was fed by a feeding tube for a decade. She was gorgeous, without a trace of gray hair, and in her youth a classical violinist. That cigarette, which she could barely inhale, was the tinniest of pleasures.

My favorite sight of him at the nursing home, though, was when he would go over with my sister, Brooke, who sang. Brooke would get out her portable system, sing along to whatever she was working on, and dad would twirl grandma in her wheelchair, dancing and rejoicing in the music. The other folks in the home loved it, and he'd dance with them, too. 

My father was a "complicated" man. On this anniversary it would be wrong to portray him without flaws, but he was a really remarkable father, and full of life in ways, now that I'm older, that I rarely see.

I really miss him.

Thank you, Lord, for a father who showed my unconditional love and encouraged me to discover and use my God-given gifts.