Eighty Seven Years and a little bit more

After an excrutiatingly long inexorable decline my brother checked our dad into hospice last week.  Dad hasn't taken any food for four days now, and isn't responsive.  An unsubstantiated report has him opening his eyes wide this morning, throwing his arms into the air above his bed and exclaiming "What's next?!" then lapsing back into semi-conciousness.

One of dad's favorite stories was how, at the age of two, he contracted nephritis, and all that could be done was to tie his ever ballooning girth down to the bed with belts.  The doctor was so certain that his death was imminent that the church choir was practicing hymns for the funeral.

He felt called to "the Lord's work" at an early age, and delivered his first sermon in the Artichoke church when he was twelve.  He said he practiced it for days, but when he got up in front of the little Minnesota congregation, he said all he could think of to say in a little under five minutes.  The more than ten years that I collected splinters in the front pulpit side pew, aisle seat, convinced me that brevity was a very temporary challenge for him. 

At the end of each Sunday service he'd always move away from the pulpit to the center of the dais for the final hymn, at which time those who felt called would come forward to "give their life to the Lord" and receive  the "Right Hand of Fellowship."  That moment occasionally provided some suspense and drama, but typically the call went unheeded.  During the last verse of that last hymn dad would start down the center aisle, always handing his hymnal to me with the same swift twist of the wrist, always the same way, so that it was face-up when it came into my hands.