I boarded a plane in Shreveport  

and helped carry my father home this past week.

My father's a remarkable man.

He was born in 1929 with a cleft palate. He endured multiple surgeries and therapies as a child. And yet, the physical and emotional scars remained. Dad, from time to time, would grow a mustache to hide the surgical scars above his upper lip. He dealt with a related, progressive hearing loss throughout his life and was, ultimately, virtually, deaf by the time I became an adult. His father battled alcoholism and other demons. Dad's parents always seemed to prefer Dad's ne'r do-well brother, Monroe: tall, strong, and a handful.

But my father enjoyed four advantages over his brother. He received a marvelous education from USC. He worked with determination. He married the right woman. He became a man of deep and relevant faith.

Because of the dysfunction of his childhood, I sometimes allow, there have been flaws. Although he spent a lifetime as a salesman, an estimator, and a project manager for industrial construction companies, he could not nail two boards together. He's not the kind of man who could hoist a toolbelt about his waist and build an addition to his home. That is, if he owned a home. You see, he'd lost his home and business when I was a teenager, a financial blow from which he never fully recovered. He has endured significant illnesses over the past twenty-odd years. Guillain-Barre syndrome; a "perfect storm" of infections that required months of hospitalization and rehabilitation; polysystic kidney disease and years of dialysis.

Over the past year, he witnessed the deaths of his wife of nearly sixty years and his youngest son.

But...he raised five children.  

Children of faith and determination and integrity. He raised them to believe they could accomplish anything they could envision. And he never dismissed our dreams. Oh, I could tell you stories. And he taught his children to love their mother. And to love others and to communicate that love freely. And so much more.

So much of who I am today, both in weakness and in strength, is a reflection of my father and mother.

Two weeks ago, my father came to visit Kathy and I in Louisiana. All by himself at eighty-three years old. He has talked about this visit ever since we moved from California three years ago, a move--typical of him--that he only encouraged. It was an amazing thing one night to hear a knock on the door and to see my aged, diminutive father, crowned with his familiar Stetson--a gift long ago from my mother--on the doorstep of our Louisiana home. He'd made it.

We had a lovely visit over the course of two weeks. However, a week into his visit, he took a hard fall on to concrete. It was horrific. He spent the next week in the hospital, assuring all who would listen that this little setback did not for one moment take away from the joy of his trip, so to speak. He was released from the hospital on Sunday, a day ahead of his scheduled return home.  

The next day, we drove to Shreveport to catch his plane to Houston, where he would travel non-stop home to Sacramento. He was weakened, but no less enthusiastic about his adventure. On the way to Shreveport that Monday morning he remarked to me, "It's been a long time since you and I have enjoyed this kind of time together!"

In Shreveport, I boarded the plane with him. I'd fly with him as far as Houston to help him make the final leg of his journey home into the arms of my sister Colleen and her husband Leland--my father's extraordinary caregivers. We parted ways in Houston. Gone was the Stetson, replaced by a lighter ball cap I had bought him in Louisiana. He had insisted that the Stetson remain here with me. "I'll pick it up next Spring," he'd assured. I protested against him leaving this treasured gift. He grew adamant, "The Stetson stays."

My dad left to go home, and the next day I returned home to Louisiana. I had a strange sense that my trip to Houston had been somewhat of a pilgrimage--only backwards. I was seeing my father home from his pilgrimage, one last pilgrimage, and then home.

Yesterday, my father passed away quietly in his sleep. He's home.

And I've got the Stetson. Thanks, dad.

The faithful love of the LORD never ends!*  

Great is his faithfulness; 

      his mercies begin afresh each morning.