Remembering a Ted Lasso Lind of a Dad
“Beloved,” “Husband,” “Father” were in gold letters across his casket.
Creative non-fiction helps one look at situations calmly that might otherwise be painful. This is not how I experienced my Dad’s funeral almost twenty years ago, but remembering it with respectful humor eases the pain.
Some of you have been asking for more musical inserts, and there are a few if you listen to this rather than read.
“Everything I know about farming, I learned from Quinter” was my son Gabe’s opening line, eulogizing my father. The audience knew farming inside out and with smiles and nods, acknowledged that they were warming to this young city-slicker from California. Had the time frame been a few decades earlier, it could have been a scene out of Oklahoma or The Music Man. We were gathered in a story-book old-fashioned church to honor the life of the first farmer in Oakley Township to use a chisel plow, the first to plant beans in 30” rows, always up on the latest Farm Bureau recommendations, on the board of the Cerro Gordo Building and Loan, and a third-generation member of the Cerro Gordo Church of the Brethren, Quinter Dean Miller, went to his eternal hereafter on December 31, 2004.
Dad sang baritone in an all-male quartet, not barbershop buffoonery, but serious, significant songs like “Beyond the Sunset” and “How Great Thou Art,” songs that make even non-believers get lumps in their throats when the melodies, more interesting than the words, swoop from down to up, soft to loud, rollercoastering to the brink, a little higher and louder (How Great Thou Art) til the music hangs suspended (How Great), the moment floats in mid-air before the soft slow-motion descent to rest on the tonic (Thou Art). Listen. Shhh. There is no musical amen, leaving you to merely think amen, but saying it out loud would show too much emotion, so it’s just as well to leave it be: after all, this is the belly button of Illinois, and we farmers are stoic amongst many other traits.
The split-lid casket is at the front of the sanctuary, open from the waist up, highlighting Dad’s embalmed smile and Ronald Regan hair, resting atop a beige velvet pillow embroidered with Quinter D. Miller, 1912-2004. He is handsome and respectable in his starched bright white shirt, fashionable tie, and pin-striped navy suit, always a sharp dresser once he left his overalls behind. Dozens of red roses cover the lower half of the casket. Gold letters on red ribbons declare “Beloved,” “Husband,” and “Father.”
Who knows what he is wearing from the waist down? For all we know, he could have been the victim of a Houdini mishap, and perhaps his nether parts are somewhere else, left behind in a vaudeville show trailer. Dad hears my joke, grins, and characteristically chuckles as he shakes his head.
As people like my mom and dad did, their burial plots were purchased even before Mom died 24 years previously, and many funereal details were carefully planned. In addition to who would sing, Dad had carefully orchestrated who would play which instruments, what scriptures would be read, and which men would be asked to be pallbearers. Carrying the coffin from the front of the church to the hearse was a serious responsibility that bestowed privilege. The older ones chosen felt good that they were still considered strong enough to share the load, and the younger ones considered that being asked bestowed manhood.
Dad’s premium casket sported copper and rose-gold metal and was adorned with bas-relief sheaves of wheat, symbolic of what we, Dad, his dad, his dad’s Dad, and what we farm women did, raise crops that fed the world. His coffin was top-quality steel, as if metal would keep the worms away longer than wood.
So, Dad, had you not been able to afford the metal casket, or had chosen a simple wooden box, or asked to be wrapped in linen, if any of that had happened, do you think it might have been easier to sit and chat with me by the peony bush I planted in your honor? Are you listening? Probably. You always did. Rest well, dear friend.