What follows is the remembrance that I gave at my dad’s memorial service last fall. Some friends and family present suggested that I post it, so I am, exactly as I read it. I might write it a little differently today, as other memories and realizations wash over me. Such is the fluid nature of grief and healing, I guess.
When I was a little girl, my dad once asked if he could color in my new coloring book. He opened the book to a picture of Tarzan—just Tarzan’s head, in broad strokes. Could he color this one? “Okay,” I said, intrigued. I’d never thought of my dad as the coloring book type.
The next morning, I found the book, propped open on the kitchen table. In the night while I slept, my dad had colored. Tarzan’s head was now a wild mosaic. The tip of his nose was one side of the spectrum, the lobe of his ear, the other. And then there were all the colors in between—haphazard chips and dashes, filling the page. My dad had set himself a goal to use the entire box of 64 Crayola crayons. He had stayed inside the lines, I had to give him that. But as for the avant-garde effect–well, I was upset. Tarzan wasn’t supposed to look like this. My dad had broken the rules.
I searched him out, threw a little fit. My dad just laughed and hugged me, said something like, “Different strokes for different folks, sweetheart.”
Over the next few years, my dad became an occasional, renegade colorist. On the sly, he’d abscond with one of my books and create kaleidoscope-like images out of cartoon icons. Each time he did it, my outrage dissipated, until eventually I saw my dad’s behavior for what he intended it to be—a joke, right at my level. My dad was teaching me something, too. Different folks do have different strokes, yes. But also: Have a little fun, why don’t you, Karen? There are all kinds of ways to imagine the world.
In trying to shape a picture of my dad, I decided to create my own mosaic of memories, arranged somewhat in chronological order. Of course I carry so many images of my dad in my mind and heart that I can’t possibly share them all. Just a few will have to do today—selected elements I’d like to celebrate now.
First and foremost, my dad taught me about the power of words. Most nights after dinner, I would climb up on his lap and beg him to tell me a story. Most of his tales concerned pranks he’d pulled, scraps he’d gotten into and out of (with varying measures of success), adventures he’d survived—in a town called Luck, Wisconsin, in Oak Park, and Chicago—and even across the ocean during World War II, in distant places like France, Japan, and the Philippines. Sometimes a dark element surfaced in these tales—like a shark’s fin cutting through bright water—but always, quickly this was submerged beneath the weight of my dad’s laughter. Always, my dad’s stories ended with laughter—us both laughing, and my mom casting us a quiet smile.
The words my dad thought powerful were not only his own. He was always reading or describing something he had read. “Use a word three times in one day and it will be yours,” he’d say to me, intentionally extending new and ever more challenging words to me. I’d want to know their definitions, but he wouldn’t tell me. “Go to the dictionary,” he’d say on our morning drives to our respective schools—mine, the grammar school, his, the college. Home again at night, I’d often do just that. I’d look things up in the dilapidated dictionary my dad treasured from his college days, and shared with me.
My dad loved Wheaton College and the Wheaton church community with his whole heart—obviously, we are all gathered here today, one of his few requests as he neared his death, that College Church has so graciously helped fulfill—but my dad also never forgot the vastness of our world. He shared this awareness with me in simple ways from the get-go, driving my mother and me downtown so many weekends—to museums and Carl Fisher Music. I liked best riding on his shoulders down Michigan Avenue, feeling farther away from the roaring subway vents that frightened me so, and almost like I could touch the tops of the buildings.
And then of course there were the tours with the Men’s Glee Club. Of these, many can speak with great feeling and insight, as Dave and Joanne have already done today. I’ll just say that my dad, along with the Club, gave me my first sense that worshipping God and making art did not have to be mutually exclusive acts. Those great concerts were spiritual events for me—God seemed as mysterious and compelling as another language, or era, or country, as lovely and delicate as the echo of a perfectly struck note in a cathedral space. But just as important to me was the music that was made in smaller, humbler venues. The setting might have been a church basement in Indiana, the music a blessing sung over the simple meal prepared in that basement’s kitchen, but my dad’s desire for grace and beauty, his yearning to give back to those who had given something as basic as bread, seemed to me to be always there, reflected in song.
Naturally, there were difficult times in my dad’s life too. The first of these, the one that we most fully shared, was my mother’s death. As soon as he was able, my dad tried to restructure our family life, and in doing so he taught me other important lessons about survival and comfort. He established certain patterns and pleasures. The smell of dinner cooking in the crockpot. A nice meal out. Chores shared. During my high school years, my dad would call into my room every early morning: “This is the day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!” His voice carried a reasonable balance of joy, wry humor, and irony—Might as well look on the bright side, even though let’s face it, waking up at this hour can be a real drag! And he’d wave me off to the school bus every morning, a cup of his beloved coffee in his hand.
Then there was college and a certain necessary distance that extended into my twenties. But always, my dad took pride in what I did, whether I was in graduate school or working. (Just a few weeks ago, going through his things, I found ads that I wrote back in the 1980s, carefully folded and stored with his stripes from the army.) And then came my marriage to Greg and our children.
As I’m sure some of you can imagine, and my dad himself admitted, it was not always easy to be Clayton Halvorsen’s son-in-law, especially early on in the relationship. When, over a lovely meal that my dad had prepared, Greg and I first presented the news of our engagement, my dad leaped from the table and unsheathed one of his treasures—an engraved saber that he’d brought home from Japan. This was an unconscious gesture, I’m sure; however, it left a certain impact. But then my dad blessed our wedding day by singing so beautifully the same song he’d sung at his sister’s wedding fifty years earlier. And as time passed, Greg, my dad, and I laughed about the saber-incident. My dad learned to become vulnerable with Greg, and affirming, too. Greg became the person with whom my dad most listened to music. They both liked their music LOUD, and as they discussed different pieces together, my dad showed Greg how he thought they were beautiful. In Florida, when my dad and Joan (who is with us today) met, fell in love, and decided to marry, my dad asked Greg to be his best man. Greg and I took joy in celebrating their wedding, and in knowing my dad and Joan together. And of course in his last years, my dad always wanted Greg to fill him in on the news of everyone here in Wheaton. “He was one of the men who really blessed me,” Greg said, soon after my dad’s death.
Magdalena and Teo. I’m saying this to you now. Your grandpa loved you. He first met you, Magdalena, soon after you were home. With Grandma Joan sitting right beside him, he set you on his knee, bounced you like he once bounced me, and he was the first person, outside of Daddy and me, who I saw make you laugh your rich, intoxicating laughter. Grandpa laughed right along with you. He always waited with anticipation for your smile. He thought you the most sensitive, wise, and beautiful girl ever, and how could he not? At the end of his life you were so very kind and attentive to him, so compassionate.
Teo, Grandpa liked nothing better than to watch you play—with trains, puzzles, Legos, and especially, I think, with his little dog, Buddy. I think Grandpa saw the little boy he once was in you—the way you love good books and music and jokes. I’ll never forget that even this past June, Grandpa found ways to joke with you, sharing candy and smiles.
At the very end of his life, Magalena and Teo, Grandpa said, again and again about both of you, “They are so good. So very, very good.” And he was so right.
My dad was so right, at the end of his life, even as so many things went so wrong in him. In spite of his years and his health—or perhaps because of them—my dad expressed with even greater transparency the best parts of himself. When he was able, he greeted Joan with sweet smiles and love. He even proposed to her all over again, riding along one day in the car. He couldn’t tell his own stories as much anymore, but he listened with joy to other peoples’—especially those of Joan’s son and daughter, Jerry and Elsa, who are also here with us today.
At the end, when I visited my dad, I mostly just sat beside him, holding his hand. Sometimes he would raise my hand to his lips, always to the end a gentleman, and more than ever before a gentle man. One day, he looked at me and said wonderingly, “I see you. For the first time, I really see you.” I can’t tell you what this meant to me—but perhaps you can imagine? The words of 1 Corinthians 13 came back to me then:
11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly,* but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
In that moment, I felt that as much as he was able to on this earth, my dad was seeing me simply in spirit—in the spirit of Christ—my true self. What better gift can a parent give to a child, to simply SEE them and love them for who they are? I believe I had a sense of what heaven might be like, experiencing this, receiving in this way, a quality of mindful presence and loving acceptance that is—my apologies to everyone here and to my dad, too—ultimately beyond words.
The very last day of my dad’s life was Labor Day, and to the end he fought the good fight, battling for breath. His strong lungs and heart kept up their work as long as they could. The day before this, he had looked at Joan and said, “I’m all right now.” And then he had looked at me and said, “Love you.” That was the end of spoken language for him, though he seemed to be listening so hard as he held on to our hands. Finally my dad’s impeccable sense of timing bowed to God’s timing. I am so grateful that we were with him—his wife and his children. Even on his last day, he inspired others, all of us, to sing.
