The Gifts We Receive
Funerals are difficult, and when they are held to celebrate the life of a deceased parent they are worse. In Indiana the tradition is for the immediate family to stand at the front of the room and welcome guests. Sometimes people stand for 3 to 6 hours with a steady stream of people, wishing them well. Usually this at a minimum handled by a spouse or parent or as was in my case recently a child.
My Father passed this last December (2012) and the responsibilities of planning, hosting, and comforting people for the funeral fell to me and my wife. In my dad’s case the procession of people was pretty small, he was 78 and frankly his death was a small nonevent for even his formerly close friends. So I lingered beside the casket greeting and reminiscing with the smaller than usual crowd who had come to pay their respects.
As way of background I am an only child. So there was no one else to share the duties with. My step mother chose not to attend as a result of poor health and the recent almost day and night care she had given my father. I do have two marvelous sons and they did chip in a bit, but they have families of their own and if I didn’t know all the guests who passed thru, they certainly were at a loss.
My wife, who had also recently lost her father told me, at that start of the day, to accept the gifts people would give me while I stood in the greeting line. In our family we call the remembrances from the guests, our gifts. I certainly got many and all were appreciated. But two gifts were especially valuable to me. Both the same type of remembrance but both I hold so dearly today and neither about my father in particular. I want to share these gifts with the reader in hopes that someday we may all acquire such lasting gifts for our families to share.
I think everyone who knows me figures out some basic facts pretty quickly. The first is where I was raised. Kokomo IN, the second is when and to whom I am married, the names of my children and what they do for a living and finally that I am diabetic. In many ways I think I got that order from my mother who had previously passed in 1986.
Two couples came thru my dad’s viewing (that is what we call it in Indiana) but both related diabetic stories about my mom. One couple consisted of my mom and dad’s best man who was also married to one of the bride’s attendants and the second a friend who worked with my mom. Both told me how my mom would sit for diabetic children in the early 60’s. They were so grateful for my mom’s willingness to do this.
You see mom was diagnosed in the early 1960’s with type 1 diabetes. Today we might call her a type 1.5. Still mom took insulin; she endured the difficulty of boiling her glass syringes and needles to sterilize them and the inefficiency of urine testing. It was not easy to have diabetes in those days.
But if it was not easy for a grown up, imagine the issues that were present for a child with type 1? They required near constant care, there was great fear of lows, and frankly no one wanted to sit for these children. That was the basis of the gift I got that day.
Both parents thanked me profusely for my mom’s willingness to watch their type 1 children while they did other things. In one case a lady said my mom’s willingness to watch her son meant that her family could eat, because otherwise she had no job. The couple I mentioned before had a daughter who was diagnosed at age 4 and you can imagine that no one would watch her while her mom got her hair done, or went to the store, or even as she related, went someone and cried because of being so scared.
I can remember mom watching many diabetic kids particularly during the summer months and I mentioned this to the second couple. They told me what a god send my mom, but also my dad, had been to so many people with young diabetic children. They said in those days the disease was so complicated that no one would or could watch their children, which meant that my mom was the natural choice. At the time I had no idea why these children would show up at my house.
Both couples thanked me profusely, for my parent’s services. Yes I got many gifts that day. But for me, the most important gift I received was knowing that my parents, went out of their way to serve families in need. Yes it was not a big thing, yes mom did not have to do it. But as one of the fathers told me, when we dropped the kids at your mom’s we knew they would be safe. As a worried parent of a very young type 1 child, I cannot imagine a better gift.
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Rick