These thoughts did not come to me in any chronological order, nor did I record them in one. It is really just a hodge-podge of recall - some before, and some after Dad's passing. I admit to not being the best example of my faith but I also make no apologies in admitting that I try - I just fail miserably at times. I will never measure up to this man but he's left a great example to aspire to.
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| 15 years old |
Dad was actually supposed to carry the first name of 'James' but the person recording the information for the birth certificate only heard "J". I guess no follow up questions were asked and the birth certificate was submitted as "J Terrance Cannon". You'd think that "Jay" would have been more likely but fate decided otherwise, so instead of growing up being called James, Jim, or possibly even Jimmy he became "Terry" to all who knew him.
This would come to serve him and his posterity well, as we knew that anyone asking for a "Mr. J Terrance Cannon" over the phone was a telemarketer. A similar situation holds true for mom being called "Joan" as her given name is actually "Josephine".
He died on May 30th and we had his funeral on June 5 but Alzheimer's took him from us long ago. His body was here but for the last five years or so I was unable to call upon his wisdom to help me deal with some of life's challenges. I had to attempt some wisdom of my own, and while that's not a bad thing and it promoted personal growth I have to admit that I still felt cheated.
So I thought about it and realized there are two ways to look at the situation. While I realize I'll go through the stages of grief, and that I'll likely bounce back & forth between the two viewpoints to varying degrees I still need to continue to look at it the correct way. To give you a frame of reference, it helps to look at the seven stages of grief. They are typically described as follows:
1. Shock or disbelief
2. Denial
3. Anger
4. Bargaining
5. Guilt
6. Depression
7. Acceptance and Hope
As I said, I saw two ways to look at this. The first was bitterness and disappointment. Anger is the third stage of grief and is considered perfectly natural. the danger is that some remain in this stage for far too long. We all know that death is a necessary part of life but many times we still feel cheated by the loss of a loved one.
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High School Graduation
Worland, WY 1954 |
The other coping mechanism is acceptance and joy - yes, I said joy. Acceptance is the 7th and final stage of the grieving process, and will eventually happen no matter how you approach it. Joy is tantamount to us being able to cope. This is not to say we don't feel sadness or even some anger, but joy of knowing (even as cliché as it sounds) they are in a better place minimizes the time spent in the dangerous stage of anger.
There are those out there who would have us believe that we are nothing more than an unintentional science experiment that created us as intelligent beings via eons of evolution, and that there is no point or purpose for us to be here. Following that logic means we're just killing time in this life while we wait for our turn to cease existing.... anywhere.
Joy comes from the faith that death is merely a necessary path in returning to our Father in Heaven, from knowing there is a purpose to this journey, and our trials here aid our growth and learning - even as unpleasant as they can sometimes be. Joy typically means that death = a reunion with loved ones and they will, as William Shakespeare's Hamlet says, "shuffle off this mortal coil" and their aches and infirmities cannot follow them to the next life.
I grieve for the loss of my dad, Terry. I have gone through all the stages of grief - some more quickly than others - and I rejoice in where he is now. His crazy intellect, dry wit, and charm have all been restored and that's the dad I'm going to meet when my time comes. I need to be a much better person if I'm to measure up to half the man he is.
In the moments where we tend to deify the deceased (viewings and funerals, etc.) we look back at our time spent with them. I believe that bitterness and regret only rests with those of us left behind. I don't believe we take it with us into the next phase so for anything I may have said or done with a negative tone, I'm going to consider myself forgiven. It helps me cope, and when it comes to my dad, forgiveness was a well-used tool in his wheelhouse.
For me, one of the interesting facets of all this is the random chronology in which the memories come back. I have a speculative theory on that but it's not really important. The brain's random neuron's firing and the paths they take through our left and right hemispheres and all that are about as good as any other theories but you can go with whatever. I'm going to try jotting them down in the order they come for no other purpose than getting them onto a more permanent medium than my aging memory. Some of these were used in my talk but I'm going to put them here too. Better to have it multiple times than not enough.
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Married Josephine Goodrich
Idaho Falls - 1963 |
The most important memory I have is not boxed into any one occasion. Dad loved us. We knew it because he told us repeatedly, even after we'd done something we shouldn't have. Dad followed the scripture's counsel to show an increase of love after a scolding (D&C 121:43). Sure, we got in trouble, but we never had cause to doubt that our parents loved us, though we all used the tired phrase about 'if you really loved me' (et.al) to one degree or another. The most powerful memory I have of him vocalizing it came while we were out jogging together in the early morning. I remember the route we took, and where we were when he told me. We were just up by Zumbrunnen's house in the early stages of the run. I may have prompted him but even if I did, there was no hesitation in his reply.
I remember playing catch with him on multiple occasions. Sometimes it was with a baseball and other times with a football (I was never good with a frisbee until much later). On one in particular (baseball) he noticed that my reaction time was delayed. We went and got my eyes tested and sure enough, I needed glasses. I know this doesn't rank as anything special but he was spending time with me and he became observant of something not-quite-right. I was never a gifted athlete but my play did improve.
Another story of playing catch had a little different ending. I was older but I still loved playing catch. The glasses had helped me learn to adapt to different speeds of incoming. The problem was that my depth perception for throwing was still way off. I threw an errant football and he came down wrong on his ankle. He went down like a sack of potatoes and held his head while he rocked back and forth. I yelled, "What's wrong?" and he responded with something about his ankle. I said, "Then why are you holding your head?". He called back, "I don't know". Some father's may have been angry about the series of events but dad took it in stride. Again, no question of his love for me.
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| Eagle Scout |
Scouting was a big part of dad's DNA. I have to (somewhat shamefully) admit that Scouting trips, even with the memories of trips with my dad, are not my first choice. I actually didn't mind them at the time, and I think I would still like to go on the trips with my son if I didn't have such bad back pain. I just spend time with my son in other areas to make up for it. I still need to work on making sure he knows I love him though.
I digressed a bit there. I think dad would have gone with me into the eye of a hurricane if the need arose but dad loved the camping and cooking and all the other higher-type-adventure stuff I did while in the scouting program so it wasn't really a sacrifice for him. I loved having him there too. If I'm being perfectly honest, he was my best friend on those trips. I wasn't really the sports type and I may have been one of three (out of around 25 or so) that was not blessed with athletic prowess. He was someone I could talk to when I felt I couldn't relate to any of the other boys. If I'm being completely honest, during that time and at that age, I don't think the other boys really cared to have me around so unless I had a merit badge class or someone personally invited me, I just stuck with him.
Dad didn't judge, or if he did, it was not harshly or out in the open. I think he has interacted with people from many walks of life, many of which didn't have the same central nature as his own and he never once said a bad word about anyone. You could have felt comfortable around him no matter your background and ideologies. I believe he inspired the guileless faith of a child from more than just his children.
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Missionary in the
West Spanish American mission.
Included parts of Arizona,
California, and Mexico. |
He would give me blessings when I asked for them, even if it were for something mundane. I remember trying to get the car ready to take some friends to Lagoon and I was worried the car may not make it, but we really wanted to go so I asked dad for a blessing that we would arrive their safely and without incident. Since dad was the one giving the blessing I had complete faith that we would be fine. Whether or not you believe in that type of thing, I did, and my dad was my rock. If he said it would be fine, that was all I needed to hear to have complete peace of mind.
Now, before anyone walks away from this and thinking I thought my dad was flawless, please understand that, while that may have been a bit myopic on my part up until I was in my teens (isn't that when everyone rebels?) I look back now and, with full control of my faculties and not some waxy catatonia, I remember things about him that I look at as slightly flawed - like a dent in the family car - noticeable, but nothing that affected the function.
Dad wasn't the greatest teacher, at least not to me. Not that he couldn't do it. Heavens, no. I think he could've picked up some nuggets of knowledge from NASA and taught them to us if he'd wanted to. He did try from time to time but it was more that he was always trying to accomplish something, to get something done, to check something off his honey-do list. Teaching us would have taken time and he wanted to be done. That's not to say he didn't want our help but I wonder if he hoped that some knowledge would just rub off on us, like perpetually grease-stained hands of a mechanic after spending so much time under hoods, even after multiple attempts to get them clean.
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| BYU Graduation - 1965 |
He was always very self-deprecating. It was endearing in its own way at first, and I suppose on some occasions it was meant to make us feel better about something...Like whatever happened had been his fault somehow and not ours. I believe we all do that to one degree or another but when he began blaming himself for stuff that was very clearly not his fault it became our job to re-assure him. He once blamed himself for our computer crashing. He almost never used the thing and he wasn't even in the room when it happened.
It bordered on self-resentment. I don't know if it became his nature over time to do that or if he always harbored a little bit of it. From my earliest memories of him he wasn't like that so I'm choosing to believe it just became a bad habit over time. When he first found out he had Alzheimer's - when he was still 'mostly' in control of his mental faculties - it became more constant. He would tell us things like, upon his death to just bury him in the backyard, or throw him into shark-infested waters ("to give back to nature" were his words) so we could save money on funeral expenses. Those things sound ridiculously absurd so I take them with a grain of salt but I believed that there was a hint of sincerity in his comments even though he knew we'd never do them.
His goodness outweighed his shortcomings by a metric ton. I only mention the slightly negative to illustrate that he was human. We all are. I'd bury him on the tally sheet if we want to talk about misdeeds. As his son I sometimes - many times - feel like he set the bar so high that I'd never measure up, so why try? In attempts to get past this I also remember that his goodness was not something he did to make anyone feel less about themselves, nor was it meant as a measuring stick to measure up to. It was just who he was. That's it. It was in his chemical make-up, his DNA, his soul. Choose your analogy, it was just.....him.
Hailey, Danielle, and Trenton give Laura and Mike a different set of challenges than my sisters and I gave to Dad; than Alexis, Peyton and Josiah give to Lisa; and than Joel and Emily give to Tammy and me but our approach to them should remain the same.
D&C 121:43 Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy;
Lost kids esteem their parents to be their enemy. I won't necessarily attribute it to not following this one piece of scripture but honestly, how would the world be different if everyone did?
I love and miss you dad.....
Adam
