My dad and I kept a running list of ways we didn’t want to die. Being buried alive was always No 1. Whenever we learned about unusual deaths – accidents involving farm machinery, medieval torture, mobsters encasing victims’ feet in cement before throwing them in the ocean – we added them to our shared catalogue.
Most fathers would shield their children from such morbid fascinations. Mine, a psychologist, did the opposite. He saw death as life’s most honest teacher and ensured I wouldn’t meet it as a stranger.
Death was a regular feature of life for my dad, who was raised on a farm in Indiana. He was the second of four boys, delivered by a local doctor in the family farmhouse. His only sister was stillborn. Dogs got run over by tractors, barn cats met an untimely demise and slaughtered chickens literally ran around with their heads cut off. As a university student, he lived above a funeral home, helping collect and prepare bodies for burial in exchange for discounted rent. He observed that many people hadn’t known that morning they were putting on their socks for the last time.
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I experienced my first death at three, when my next door playmate died unexpectedly of respiratory failure. My dad held my hand as I knocked on her parents’ door to convey my condolences. Somehow, he reassured me I would not similarly die in my sleep.
Several years later, my parents brought me to the funeral home to pay respects when a neighbor – the father of another friend – died from a chronic illness. I recall standing at the casket, nervously observing my first dead body. My dad said that I could touch it, explaining the skin would feel cool and waxy.
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His comfort around corpses extended to taking photos of open caskets at funerals. Our family albums include shots of me standing awkwardly next to my deceased grandparents, unsure of the appropriate facial expression. When challenged on the appropriateness of these pictures, my dad said simply that they helped him remember.
We spoke often about the unpredictability of life. After hearing a news report about a traffic accident near his lakeside home in Michigan, my dad and I discussed how a forgotten wallet or a bathroom stop could have prevented two drivers from being in the same place at the same time.
The reality of death shaped how my dad lived his life. He lamented that people make time to honor the dead at funerals yet struggle to do the same for the living; they also offer in death the praise that went unspoken in life. He once emailed me, asking: “When the folks come to see me at repose in the silky lining of the furniture box, what are they going to say to themselves as they huddle, wipe tears and whisper quietly to their friend or companion?” He wanted to take matters into his own hands, laying in a casket and pretending to be dead so he could hear what his mourners said. Then he would surprise them by jumping out to join the gathering.
The sliding-doors nature of life flashed through my mind when, in a turn of events both tragic and ironic, my dad was killed in a car accident. He was driving to work on an early Monday morning in mid-April 2019, a time when midwesterners long for spring but must contend with a fickle mother nature. His truck collided with another vehicle on icy country roads after an overnight snowstorm. By the time I flew home from Washington DC that evening, the snow had melted.
After watching my dad take his final breath, I left the hospital with a bag of his clothes. He had worn jeans rather than his usual dress pants in case he needed to shovel in the parking lot. Paramedics had cut off his beloved black leather jacket to restart his heart on the roadside. I realized he hadn’t known that it would be the last outfit he wore. And as I inspected the mangled wreckage of his truck at the police station the next day, I considered the life-changing difference a few seconds could have made.
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My family continued the tradition of casket photography. Our album now includes a picture of me standing next to his body, still uncertain how to arrange my face. When I delivered the eulogy at his funeral, I turned to his casket and suggested it was a good time for him to join us. There was, of course, no reply.
As I approach my seventh Father’s Day without him, I still hear his voice in my mind. When I read about an unusual death, I want to text him another addition to our list. I have become more intentional about joining family celebrations, supporting friends and offering praise while it can still be heard. I strive to live with death’s certainty, embodying my dad’s teaching that acknowledging its presence makes life shine with greater purpose. And when I put on my socks every morning, I am reminded of the beauty and fragility of life.
