In Honor of My Father - Sebert Reed "Jake" Nelson
Thursday, March 20, 2003
Comments: I am deeply grateful to all of you who have expressed your prayers and concerns for our family during this difficult time. Thank you so much for coming to this service and for all that you have done to express your love over the last couple of days – the food (many of my favorite dishes), the conversation, the memories, and the telephone calls. Someone even handed me a poem that she had written about my dad.
I also want to thank those who made this service possible. I have often stood before hurting families, searching for the right words and phrases to say to help them process their loss. Today, I am the one hurting and your words have comforted me as well as the entire family. Two prayers that all of us have prayed as we deal with this ache within our chests. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” And “Help me. Help me. Help me.”
“Lord, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your providential care.” My dad was at home with my mother and Becky when he died. He died quickly and peacefully after 73 years of life. Thank you. As a baby, Daddy just about didn’t make it. After about 3 months of life, he could fit in a shoebox because his mother’s milk “did not agree with me” as Daddy would say. But somehow he survived. Thank you. His first day in the mines, slate fell on him and broke his foot and hand, but somehow Daddy survived. Thank you. Then, there was that time in the army – snipers shot the tires off of his truck but they managed to miss Daddy. Thank you. There was pneumonia in 1990 when at the last minute Daddy consented to go to the hospital. That night he respiratory arrested but it was not fatal due to his location. Thank you. There was cancer in 1998. Then there was a build up of fluid, but thanks to a new drug and some good medical care, his fluid problem was alleviated and life was extended for another year. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
“Lord, help me. Help me. Help me as I process this loss.” It is difficult to refer to Daddy in the past tense as I realize that he is not accessible to me anymore. But I also realize that I have a wonderful family, all of whom are with me today and I see them as an answer to my “Help me” prayer.
I want to take this opportunity to tell my brothers and their families, my sister, and my mother, my wife and my own kids, how much more you mean to me today. In my heart, I am clinging to each one of you. Though living at a distance from some of you, I still consider you to be my very best, closest friends.
And then, I want to say something to my dad.
“One of my first thoughts daddy, when I heard about your passing, was that ‘I wish I could have had one more conversation with you.’ I wish I could have hugged you. I wish I could have told you that I loved you. I wish I could have been there for you when you were making the crossing from this world to the next. I would have liked to thank you one more time for sacrificing your body to make a living so that I could live and have a happy home to grow up in. In your diary, you wrote that you would have liked to have been a truck driver, but the extended hours on the road would have kept you from your family. Thank you for loving me in your way; for fixing my cars; for being with me when I got my first squirrel; for taking me fishing at Indian Lake; for the times we went camping in the summers; for telling me army stories about your days of service in the Korean War; left-over dinner bucket cakes; for not totally destroying me the time I accidentally gouged your lip with the frog gig; for the letters you wrote to me after I graduated from high school and left home (I still have many of them in my filing drawer and will always keep them); for the long trips that you made to see me when I lived so many miles away; for loving my kids and making our West Virginia trips always a joy; for always having the four-wheeler gassed up and ready to go; for your little riddles that would make my kids chuckle (riddles like if a hen and half would lay an egg and a half for a day and a half, how many eggs would you have?). Thank you daddy for always standing by your wife, for raising such a wonderful family. If our families turn out as good as yours, we’ll be a happy success.
Most important of all, thank you daddy, for placing your trust in Christ as Savior and for giving to each of us the hope of a better tomorrow when we all can be together again. Daddy, I make this commitment to you today. I will never allow your memory to die. When I fish the rivers and ride in the mountains of home and feel the sun on my back, I will remember you and your stories that you lived out in these places when you were growing up. While the world may little note the life that you lived, I will never forget what a precious gem we have among us in you. For now, even though our hearts are heavy and filled with aching as we think about the separation, we say ‘Good night, daddy. And you have our word; we will see you in that eternal spring-morning.’”
Finally, I would like to thank God for what Paul said to us as he was preparing to conclude his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor.15:55). After pointing out that Jesus resurrected from the dead, and after noting how that we will all be changed into imperishable people after death, Paul then looks at death as if looking at a human being. He addressed death like death was a person (personification), and he questioned death: "O death, where is your victory? O grave, where is your sting?" Paul was taunting death in light of what Christ had done in the resurrection, something that we will be celebrating soon.
That verse always reminds me of a story that one author tells about. A bee had got into the family car and his kids were going nuts. "It’s going to sting us daddy. It’s going to sting us!" He managed to trap the bee between the dashboard and the windshield and it stung him. But before the bee died, it managed to fly around a little bit, creating more pandemonium. The dad yelled, "Kids, it’s OK; I’ve got the stinger in my hand. He can’t hurt you."
That’s what Christ has done for us. He’s got the stinger in his hand as it were and the bee of death cannot frighten us like it once did. Death still frightens us; it still speaks chaos and pandemonium into our lives. But we are free to live and enjoy life to the fullest without having to worry about death like we once did. We can believe this and live in hope. You believe this and live differently.
Prayer: God, our Maker: You created my dad in your own image. You watched over him along the way for over 70 years. You made sure that family was with him and that family cared for him during his last years with us. For this, we are thankful. As we reflect on his life today, you share our grief today. Grant us strength to face our loss, with the assurance that daddy’s return to You has not broken a family circle, but only extended it beyond this earth into the heavens. Amen.
In Daddy’s diary that my mother mostly wrote in as Daddy dictated his memories to her, there is a quote (by Charles Spurgeon) that I would like to close with.
“Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you. So carve your name on hearts and not on marble.”
Daddy, you wrote your name in hearts, not on marble. We love you Daddy.
Postscript: I have 4 observations to share.
1.I grossly underestimated how difficult this whole process would be for me. I thought I knew how it would work. But the “grip” of separation comes and goes with varying degrees of intensity. At times, I’m scared. At times, I’m joyful.
2.I will never forget where I was when I heard the news, what Donnette’s expression was when she told me, and the sick feeling I get when I think about that moment. I was in the kitchen. I scrambled for the telephone in order to talk to someone who could tell me more. I talked with everyone in the holding room as they stayed with my Dad’s body as long as they could.
3.The thing that was cathartic for me was when I closed my office door at home and spent 3 hours or so writing out my funeral message for my father. I found out on a Thursday afternoon and began to write on that evening because I didn’t know what else to do (because I live 5 hours from home). I wept as I remembered my Dad’s life and wrote down the words and phrases that best communicated how I was feeling and what I wanted to say. You don’t know how hard it was when I had to open my “funeral folder” where I keep all of my funeral sermons on my computer, and create a new file entitled “jakenelson.doc.” It was also cathartic for me to also stand before the large group of people what assembled at my Dad’s funeral and give my funeral sermon.
4.Heaven means so much more to me now than ever before. The after-life, what forms we assume upon experiencing death, and the extent of that experience is more appealing to me now that I have someone who has had to make that transition alone.
