A Box of Letters, A Life of Memories

And a day of gratitude

In the course of my ministry I would occasionally receive a letter of thanks.  Most were customary missives of gratitude for a funeral officiated or a hospital visited; a precious few were effusive compliments about a sermon or an article.  Like a third grader with a good grade I loved sharing them with my dad.  He would happily read the generous note and then advise that I should “hold onto that.”  Then would follow the familiar story about how he always kept such compliments in a drawer in his office desk, to be extracted after a phone call or a visit from a parishioner who had leveled a very different assessment of his ministry.  He used those affirmational letters like a psychological antidote, or perhaps an ego acetaminophen.

At least in theory.  I was never really certain that such a literal drawer actually existed, or if perhaps he maintained such a collection, figuratively speaking, in a drawer in his memory.  Either way, it was good advice.  But I never took it.  I save plenty of things - trinkets, souvenirs, memorabilia and favorite T-shirts - but notes and letters tend to fall by the wayside.  My kids will find no such drawer of affirmations in my desk when I’m gone. Old sermons, and a seed catalogue or two, but no affirmations.

But my brother and I found his.  When Daddy died last July, ten months after our mother, there was the usual work of functional transition to undertake.  Closets and drawers to empty, furniture to donate, photo albums to manage.  They had moved from their home of 50 years some fifteen years prior into a much smaller space, decades after Daddy had retired, so their furnishings had been slimmed down and his library was much reduced.  But still, it was a job; a labor of heart, mind and soul.  In addition to the boxes we filled, it turned out that they had boxes of their own. Treasure boxes.

And one of them was the box of letters that had once filled the drawer in his office desk.  That almost mythical trove of affirmations.  Not just a few, but hundreds.  “That sermon was just for me.”  “Your time with us at the hospital meant the world.”  And on and on.  As we read them together we marveled at how much time he had spent with people as pastor, as the manifestation of “church” in that particular place and moment in time.  And how much it had mattered to the people he sat with, waited with, stopped by to visit, or shared a cup of coffee.  The gospel in a donut, common moments as bread and wine, the sacrament of a hospital prayer and a held hand.

I read through a handful of them again a day or so ago, taking in the cascade of appreciations - for that is what they were; less “compliments” in the sense of flattery and more heart-felt expressions of sincere appreciation.  And I marveled all over again at the power of simple gifts.  If I might scoff at the significance of such ordinaries, the weight of that box would prove me wrong.

I write more letters these days than I used to.  Some are electronic, but some the old fashioned way, with a pen and a piece of paper.  A few are typed using Daddy’s old student manual typewriter.  It’s work, but I’ve come to know the value of it.

And in the year since his death, I have found myself wishing I could still show him or tell him about this or that insight, or pleasure or satisfaction or sighting; wishing I could hear his thoughts about some dilemma, confusion, or aggravation, be it intellectual, interpersonal, or international.

But mostly I have found myself imagining the letters I wished I had written to him that might have found their place in that box, née that desk drawer.  For all the ways he touched my life.  For all the ways he blessed my life.

For embodying integrity.

For demanding honesty.

For embracing humility.

For indulging curiosity.

For demonstrating loving kindness.

For extending grace.

For accommodating the worst, while ceaselessly striving for the best.

For exampling strong tenderness.

For being an icon to many...

...but to me, simply “Daddy.”

It’s strange to observe a Father’s Day for the first time without one.  But, of course, I do.  In all those ways and more, in a box of letters and a lifetime of memories; in his myriad fingerprints left on how I think, how I see, how I hope, how I seek to love, I do.

And I’m grateful.

Happy Father’s Day.