Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. Exodus 20:12

Today on Father’s Day I think about my own father. Today I honor his memory and his life and consider the legacies which he left to me. He passed away five years ago in 2013 at the amazing age of 104 after a minor illness which sent him to the hospital. There his aged body simply gave out – and he left earth quietly on an April morning to be in heaven with my mother and my older brother Joe.

His name was Anton, the second son in his family to be called by that name, after a brother who died as an infant. Friends and family simply called him “Toni.” When I was very young, I remember calling him Datti or Daddy, but then one time my brother Joe called him “Pop” and the name stuck. He was my Pop thereafter. I’ve come to understand that Datti was just too intimate and personal for my very proud father who was neither.

Pop came from a very different world and time. Most of the town where he was born in 1909 had neither electricity nor indoor plumbing. Families were German, Catholic with eight to ten children running around the small farms and businesses. They were poor and hard working. Education was by nuns and up to the sixth grade only. My father left home at 14 to apprentice as a woodworker/cabinet maker. It was the trade he mastered and loved his entire life. He went to war for Germany in WWII and in the aftermath had to put our shattered lives back together by emigrating. His story is long, complicated and a spiritual testimony to God’s watching over us..

I was not close to my Pop. He was proud, distant and closed off, especially to his children. Early on he was often moody, angry and explosive. As the only girl in the family, I could never figure out how to get his approval. Most of the time, I felt as if he simply tolerated me and didn’t really care who I was. I studied hard in school and became an educated, confrontational pain in the neck daughter. We argued about anything and everything, especially history, politics and religion and everything in between. Our relationship was always uneasy. It was as if one of us wanted to receive something from the other – and wasn’t getting it. I wanted Pop’s affirmation, approval and love. I really wanted his blessing. Truthfully, I don’t know what he wanted because his pride wouldn’t let him ask. As years went by, our relationship grew closer. We forgave one another, accepted each other and with God’s grace I learned what my father’s love was.

While my father did not or could not give me what I wanted from him, he left me a large legacy of different, precious gifts. He gave me life during difficult war times when having a child must have been very questionable. His courage to survive horrific memories and begin life all over brought me to this country. He was innovative, creative and intelligent and sometimes I find similar gifts when I write or quilt. My father was never perfect, but he had great integrity. He believed in the Ten Commandments – and obeyed them. He is the only person I know who kept Sunday as the Sabbath. I’ve never met another man as morally pure in the old fashioned sense of the world. Although he could swear in three different languages, I never heard my father make a dirty remark or tell a smutty joke. He taught me the value of seeking out the truth, even as I challenged his hard held beliefs. And while he never would admit to it, I know Pop was proud of all three of his children’s accomplishments, his sons in professions, his daughter in education.

When the grandchildren came along, my father finally showed his softer side. Seeing him with the children, I saw my father’s heart being unabashedly poured out. With his grandchildren, he was like a child himself. Mostly, my father had great faith. Even into his 90’s, he’d attend church every Sunday. I know he prayed for me and my loved ones for decades. My father’s spirit often wrestled with God about his past. Sometimes he’d doubt the efficacy of prayer, but that never stopped him from praying and getting on his knees. This is my legacy. I had a praying father!

Happy Father’s Day, Pop. Ich liebe dich.