Did you shake it up?
That was one of the last funny phrases we heard from my dad before he
got really bad this past weekend. It
came to be a joke with mom, Melanie, and myself. You see, dad had been drinking glucerna for
months for his nutritional intake after it got difficult for him to put any
kind of food down. And although my mom
and all of us had done it tons of times before, it never failed that when we
would bring him his glucerna he would always ask, “Did you shake it up?” Melanie brought him a can of it just a few
days ago when he was sitting in his living room chair. As she got closer, she smiled at him and
started shaking the glucerna in front of him to show him she was doing it
right. That famous crooked smile came
across dad’s face as he took the can from her hand.
That same crooked smile that would appear when he talked
about his wife of 37 years whom he, as someone put it to me this week, truly
adored. That same crooked smile that
would appear when he would talk about his family and friends. That same crooked smile that would appear
when he would win playing “chicken foot” dominoes with his friends. That same crooked smile that would appear
when Maylee and Maddee would play dress up with him and he would end up wearing
a tiara and earrings, and that same crooked smile that I just saw this past
Friday when the girls ran inside to tell their pa-paw about how their daddy ran
and screamed like a girl because he just saw a big snake outside.
I’m going to miss that crooked smile. It was extremely hard the last few days
seeing him suffer like he did. Even
though he was in unimaginable pain, every now and then up until his final day
on earth, he would still reach up and give mom a kiss on the cheek. We all told him we loved him during those last
few seconds and we saw him trying to say something back to us and we know for
sure he was telling us that he loved us too.
I’ll miss you dad, but as Maylee and Maddee said to me after it
happened…their pa-paw isn’t coughing or hurting anymore.
That crooked smile is focused on Jesus right now, and one
day I’ll see it again when dad is standing at heaven’s gate waiting for me…probably
with a can of glucerna in his hand and a rubber snake behind his back!
