Thoughts About My Dad

"If we can look back through the generations, we see those who helped us to get where we are now—those who forged the way before us, whether they were members of the Church or not. And in the restored gospel we realize even more deeply our responsibility to link them to us through the ordinances of the temple. In a letter from the Prophet Joseph Smith to the members of the Church, we read: 'These are principles in relation to the dead and the living that cannot be lightly passed over. . . . For their salvation is necessary and essential to our salvation, . . . they without us cannot be made perfect—neither can we without our dead be made perfect' (D&C 128:15; see also verse 18)."

Elder Neil L. Andersen

I have been thinking about the passing of my Dad 29 years ago this month. He was only 54. Dad was the last  of nine children, with seven sisters and the oldest also a boy. So his siblings always called him "Sonny," which I thought was crazy, since he was "kinda old." Well, I don't see it that way today, now that I am 51. How time does change our perspective on such matters. 

I have often thought about my relationship with my Dad. When I lived at home, I felt like he and I had nothing in common. We didn't have the same opinion on anything, it seemed. And I often felt perplexed about why he chose to drink so much. I hated talking to him when he was drunk, which was about the only time he felt like conversing with me. I would just ignore him or just be plain rude, typical teenage mode. I also hated his smoking. When we were really broke and he couldn't afford his unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes, he would take to rolling his own. I imagine he smoked nearly all his life, beginning long before the Surgeon General's warning. Dad left home at 14 because his father was physically abusive and went home at 17 only to have his parents sign him into the Navy in 1944, where he served until 1966. He never seemed very happy. His hands shook a lot and I always thought it was because he was an alcoholic. When I was 22, four years after I had moved away from home, Dad finally went to the doctor and discovered he had cancer. It was no big surprise to any of us, since he had been coughing all the time and seemed sick when I lived at home. But, back then, people in my Dad's generation didn't want to hear the "C" word, since it almost always meant a death sentence. And I guess it was. After the diagnosis in April, my Dad passed away in November. 

 

After his death, I had time to think about all my Dad's great attributes. He really did love my Mom, my sister and I, even if he didn't want anymore children after two girls. I think he was afraid of being surrounded by lots of girls, just like when he grew up. Dad was an alcoholic, but he was a functional one, always working hard and saving his drinking for the evenings and weekends. He was never abusive. In fact my Mom would often threaten my sister and I that, if we didn't behave, Dad would spank us when he got home. The thought of this would make us beg Mom not to tell Dad, fearing his supposed wrath. Well, I can only remember a couple of times that my Dad actually spanked me, although I am quite certain I deserved it many more times. His idea of a spanking consisted of him taking his belt and hitting my behind ever so lightly that my crying was just from the humiliation of it all. I'm sure now that he preferred not to be like his father. So why were my sister and I so afraid of Dad? We saw him very little from the time I was five until he hurt his back and was in bed for six months when I was 10, which is not a great time to get to know someone, as you may guess. My sister, Mom and I were supposed to go with him to Spain when I was five. However, President Kennedy had been killed the year before and, with the change in administrations, the base housing had not been funded. My Dad claimed it was because President Johnson was not a Navy man like Kennedy. So Mom, my sister and I instead moved to Iowa, near my Mom's aging parents, while my Dad was stationed overseas. I can only remember seeing my Dad a couple of times until he retired from the Navy. Then he took a job that required 12-14 hour days. He left for work in the morning before we arose and came home at night after our bedtime. (Yes, those were the days when children actually had a bedtime, but I digress.) Dad was always proud of my sister and I. After all, we were pretty mild kids, compared to many of the teenage trouble-making kids in our small town. No hot gossip about the Weinkauf girls was ever told. 

Through many years of reflection and gradual insight, I have come to realize that I am, indeed, very much my father's daughter. I have the "familial shake" he had, as does my nephew.  I have the depression Dad never had diagnosed, but, nevertheless, self medicated himself for. My "drug" of choice is and always has been food. I even look like the Weinkauf side of the family, whereas my sister has more of the McCoy and Hixson attributes. 

In 1983, my brother in-law performed the proxy temple work for my our Dad in the Washington DC Temple. Later that year, I began to serve in the Virginia Roanoke Mission and commenced praying for an answer about whether my Dad had accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ on the other side. One night while I was kneeling by my bed in White Sulphur Springs, West Virgina, I felt my Dad's presence, standing behind me with my friend Randy McMillan who had passed away in 1978. I had always hoped that Randy was able to find my Dad and teach him the gospel. Now I knew he had. Tears rolled down my face as a flood of emotion overwhelmed me, along with the positive answer I had been seeking. Dad would never talk to me about how he felt about the Lord. He just told me it was private and they he didn't feel that he needed to share it with anyone. But now I knew that he was progressing on the other side. I felt so much relief. Then I concentrated on praying that my Mom would take the missionary discussions and join the Church. But that's another story for another time...