unending tribute to Dad through cycles of grief, joy, gratitude...and hope

I remember the feel of the bark on the tree against my palms and against my cheek, the tricky slickness of the bottoms of my mary janes against the skirting of the trunk and roots.  I was five.  I could feel wisps of hair from the loose bun falling around my face and lilting across  my eyes as I blew kisses toward the camera at Dad’s beckoning. It was a pretty day and I felt pretty in my dress with the white top and dark blue skirt (were there polka dots?) And lacy socks and mary jane’s.  I felt pretty being photographed like a model and hanging out with my dad.  He was thin and his hair was still black, waved back with a beautiful hairline I see now when I look at photos.  He was cool.  He could sing beautifully.  He could take beautiful photographs.  He could tell wonderful stories.  He could write words to move you to tears or laughter.  He could take the big rabbit out of its cage behind Granny’s house and let me pet it.  He could drive fast through the mountains.  He could make up really good stories about people in restaurants eating at nearby tables. He could work all night. He could win writing, advertising and marketing awards. He could sell anything. He could only write when he had a deadline and a paycheck.  He could be gone for long stretches of time.  He could hurt my feelings faster than anyone.  He could make things that didn’t make sense make sense.  He could explain why people were the way they were.  He could pray with his eyes open. He could help millions of people get through national disasters or a political crisis.  He could negotiate the release of prisoners or a change in policy.  He could get splinters out of my finger.  He could pick out the best puppies.  He could bake a chicken that had cinnamon as a main seasoning ingredient.  He could order the best steaks.  He could help me map out a better plot sequence.  He could decorate a house—perfect compositions of wall hangings and furniture.  He could make things sound better.  Or worse.  He could move and uproot his family every two to three years.  He could make up the best words like disgustipating. He could make me feel like the most special and important person in the universe.  He could make me feel suffocated.  He could make me angry.  He could make me laugh.  He could make me cry.  He could NOT beat me at racquet ball once I turned 12.  Otherwise, he could do anything.  Except prevent vascular disease from taking over his life. He can still make me miss him and love him and forgive him for being human like the rest of us.  He can still be the best dad ever.  He can still speak to me.  He can still make me laugh and cry.  He can still make me feel special and loved.  He can still make me wish he were here to eat Calabash shrimp at the beach, or drink cherry ibc colas, or watch tennis.  He can still be here with me, for me, in my memory and in my ways.  I hope he can forgive me for not knowing a lot of things I wish I’d known...about how and how much he loved me...about misunderstandings that seem to linger...about how really really far death can separate you...about how impossible it is to know the story when it wasn’t told...  I put all of this into a pretty box of joy without sides, wrapped in paper of unlimited gratitude, and ribboned in swirls of grieving that will hopefully one day be untied...to find us all there—all the family for generations—together inside (and out) once again...

how weird was that? just streamed it all of a sudden...  and i might post it but I’d have to name it something like unending tribute to dad through cycles of grief and joy and gratitude...and hope...

i hope you have a great father's day and will celebrate your dad in a special way.  i'm grabbing moon pies and cherry ibc colas and going to the beach...

 

march 20 thoughts of the coming 24th and fred's eulogy

my email to fred this morning:  it's just brilliant.  last month or so when we chatted you sent it and it was exceedingly timely then and timely now once again.  tuesday marks the one year since dad died and i still feel kinda lost on the ocean of my world without much of a sail and the rudder is rather broken off....  it still feels decidedly wrong that he isn't here.  it still feels fresh that he was sick for so long---longer than i can even remember so the more of the real him i can find---like in your eulogy---the better.  time collapses.  just yesterday i was 14 and you and he were talking in the den before dinner...  time collapses.

i want to believe that all the pain of loss we feel for those we love like this is a sign that it will not always be like this i fear sometimes it seems as plausible that it is a sign that it will never be more than this again...  so there it is, my great lack of faith laced with rage a little...  that things have to be this way.  (okay, i'll add "for now" just to sprinkle a little powder sugar of hope on it all).

may i post your eulogy on my blog?  it's very private there...nobody reads the stuff...but i hope maybe someday i'll write something worth reading... (okay THERE it is, the spoonful of self pity to stir into the coffee of grieving...just for a bit of flavoring)...

i will add this---it is a GLORIOUS friday morning of my spring break and i am outside on the patio loving the relative peace and quiet...with nothing more to do today than ignore and deny the impulse to work in the yard or clean the house while i indulge in the work of the novel about my father's family.  got back last night from spending a week (well, since saturday) with the Ballard Bunch in Columbia!!!  it was fabulous.  all day with aunt dot telling stories and pouring over (is that the right "pouring"? or is there another spelling?  bly me) the rough draft...  so now i will move on into all of that and work the story...i suddenly saw the metaphor of kneading bread dough...man is it a workout!!! hopefully it will leaven properly, bake well, and feed everyone...

so is that a yes on posting your eulogy?

he responded "post away" so here is his eulogy...cut and pasted from his email...

2014 04 16 Jerry Ballard eulogy—Fred Alexander

            Last month I spoke to a college class.  In my hour and fifteen minutes, I covered only 5 of my 20 points, plus 3 things I thought of just before my talk began.  And all this got lots of laughs, a few ah-sos, 2 ovations, and a professor who said she took some helpful notes.  Good thing I gave everyone a detailed handout afterwards!

            Driving home, I realized, if I believed it possible, I had been channeling Jerry Ballard.  I was privileged to work with Jerry, frequently daily for about four years ending in 1977.   I began working for him part-time, as a grad student at Columbia Bible College.  That’s now Columbia International University.  He was quite old when I met him, maybe 37 or 38.

            When Jerry was on a creative roll—and he frequently was--he had amazing insights, great humor, a barely audible voice, illegible handwriting, and absolutely no sense of time.           

            I had never met anyone like him.  Nearly forty years later, I still haven’t met anyone else like him. 

            With my background as a young Marine officer, Jerry thought I could help him meet deadlines.  After creating a management system and working with him several months, I had to tell him our system wasn’t working very well.

            “Why not?” he asked.

            “Because you are not a Marine and do not follow your own orders or my suggestions.”

            Very quietly, he said, “I was afraid of that.”

            I heard him deliver the message at a daily CBC chapel one time.  Guess what his topic was?  Time management.  I know he struggled with it as a stewardship issue in our culture.  But I don’t think he was ever quite convinced that our North American ways were always God’s ways.  

            He was the first person I’d met in full-time Christian work who was not a pastor, musician, or missionary.  He was my model for how to be a committed Christian in a secular world.  The Jerry I knew enjoyed the world that God created, but kept his heavenly loyalties.  At work and as a family man at home, I saw him live with freedom and responsibility.

            Professionally, he was my mentor.  He would give me my own one-student seminar on how to write a letter, the graphics of communication, type selection, and communicating with senior leaders. 

            When he left CBC to found a Christian advertising agency in Atlanta, I succeed him as department head.  With the president’s permission, I hired Jerry to do the creative work we needed.  He was simply great and in his element—deciding what to do and say to reach a target audience.  He could create the concept, words, and art—and I could get it produced on time.

            Within a year, he hired me to join him in Atlanta.  In the sovereignty of God, which often leaves us a bit humanly confused, Jerry was offered . . . and accepted . . . another job between the time I gave my notice and arrived with my very pregnant wife! 

            Frankly, years later I understood that the new ad agency owner was terrific and hired him twice for projects in WNC.  But at this time, we didn’t understand each other well.  I saw that my labor needed to be in another part of the vineyard and left.  I certainly needed a job to support my wife and our one-month old son!

            It seemed likely that I’d be working for a non-Christian organization.  Now I wasn’t sure how to think about that and it made me uncomfortable.  Jerry listened carefully and observed that “God doesn’t call most Christians to work in Christian organizations.  I think He wants most of us to work where the people who need Him are--in the world.”

            With Jerry, came Winnie—for whom many of us truly did thank God!  I think Winnie consoled my new bride about living with a communicator.  Diane was wondering why I could write all this stuff to reach hundreds or thousands, but couldn’t remember to tell her basic things, like when I was coming home or going out of town.  “It’s the curse of the communicators,” I think Winnie said.  “They can reach the masses, but they have trouble with individuals.” 

            Jerry was a world Christian.  He told of sitting with a brother on the dirt floor of a hut in Africa or South America.  Though they did not share a common language, they enjoyed each other’s company.  Jerry said that was because they had the joy of having the most important thing in common, faith in Christ.

            I saw Jerry as an insightful expert on parenting—at least one day, for a few minutes.  While we talked before supper in his Atlanta den, fourteen year old Kim walked in with a request.  There was a communications gap and some mutual frustration, which was fortunately shaded by an umbrella of love. 

            In the end, Jerry admitted communications defeat.  And Kim was still a bit frustrated.  To her, and perhaps to himself, he said, “You know Kim, the problem is I just became competent in being the father of a 13 year old girl and now you’ve turned 14 and changed some more.  Now I need to start all over again!  So bear with me.” 

            Finally, my mentor and friend taught me that genius does not think in ways I’ll ever understand; it is good that God made us different; and that friendship and love can transcend decades and debilitation. 

            I think the world is a dimmer place without Jerry Ballard and look forward to seeing him again someday through the hope we have in Our Lord Jesus Christ.  

Holy Saturday and Dad's Memorial Service

041914

holy Saturday.  Day of Dad’s memorial service.  Not possible.  Writing it like that ravages my soul.  And this morning there will soon be chaos and ensuring this and that and suddenly the service will happen and the reception and I want to be there and I’m afraid I’ll scoot through it and it will all be over and I won’t have been really there.  Really present.  Because somehow in my head I think to be there is to be so present that time itself can’t pass.  Being there somehow should transcend time and rule time and yet...time keeps passing and proving that we’re not really here...not fully...not wholly...not truly.  Someday we will be here.  

so glad I awoke so early in this holy darkness...awoke surrounded by all the disciples...trying to get their head around what just happened...how horrible it was to watch him die like that.  Totally expected—he had told them he was going to die like that—but totally surprising.  Horrifying.  Unthinkable.  I’m sure they swirled heady and light with both fear and hope, doubt and sustaining story.  Remembering what Isaiah said.  Remembering Moses.  The psalmist.  It is written.  It is written.  Inscribed.  Spoken.  The only truth that matters, the only power that sustains, the spoken written word.  They gathered as we are going to do to remind each other of what he said and did, of what was written, they had yet to see the resurrection...they were in that horrible state of loss and shock and doubt and hope and fear and connection and reassurance and unknowing.  Perhaps one of them remembered the 139th psalm...when I awake, I am still with you...

It is also the 19th anniversary of the murrah bombing.  Dad was there for that.  He said he heard it as he was leaving the house, but it sounded like a sonic boom and as they lived nearer to stretches of country he thought perhaps maneuvers were being practiced.  Except that the dog started barking.  He knew it was something else.  And then his phone started ringing.  He coordinated the emergency phone information center for that day...turned out he was there for something like 72 hours without sleep connecting people and information...   That day then did not fall on holy Saturday as it does today...but those who survived have felt this same range of feelings and questions and ... this same sense of unreal movement of time impossible to grasp...

So blessedly quiet right now.  I have not awakened to such blessed quiet in a long time.  I have not been able to write in a long time.  Not from a place of peace and reflection.  I do not want to get up from this place...I do not want the day and the time to sweep me into the unconscious of survival but I know it will.  I know that soon keri and her family will come and we will go to the chapel and make sure the equipment is there.  I know that soon music will fill a chapel haunted by those of us who gather to talk about Dad and then we’ll move into reception and talk and laugh and tell stories and eat...and that will last for who knows how long and then we will slowly reluctantly eventually retire into the night and it will be over and life will go on impossibly and uncertainly and folks will then tomorrow attend the Easter services in the hope of resurrection...

And life will go on.  Nothing will ever really be right again until the hope becomes real...