(Delivered at Dad’s Celebration of Life, October 5, 2024)

A few nights ago I dreamed that he called out to me, calling up the staircase from the first floor.  I jumped out of bed, but by the time I reached the top of the stairs, I remembered that he was gone….and that there was no one for me to answer.

It is sometimes strange to be in our house, without either him or Mom there anymore.  They moved into the house here in Bellingham almost exactly 10 years ago.  I moved in more than three-and-a-half years ago, but that time it was a little different than all the other times I had arrived on their doorstep throughout my life, suitcases in hand, big ol’ shit eating grin on my face, “Hi Ma!  Hi Dad!  Can I stay with you guys for a while?”

No, three-and-a-half years ago it wasn’t because I had just landed back in the United States after five months working in an Ebola Treatment Unit in Western Africa.  It wasn’t because I had finally walked out of my marriage.  It wasn’t because I was back yet again from another travel nurse assignment, three months or six months under my belt in Maine or Texas or Seattle and looking for a temporary roost and a chance to do some laundry before launching off into yet another adventure in trauma nursing.

It was because Mom was forgetting.

Everything.  Mom was forgetting everything.

Her friends.  How to sew.  How to cook.  How to read.  How to dress, how to eat.  Her grandson.  Her children.  Herself.

And, eventually, on the day she died, she just simply forgot to breathe.

But the one thing, the ONE thing that Mom remembered, until the very end, the ONE thing that Alzheimer’s couldn’t take from her……..was Dad.

~

I think it was because Dad made her feel safe.

Dad made all of us feel safe.

I think some people say, well, yeah, he was your Dad.  That’s the role of a father.  To make his family feel safe.

I think there are a lot of people in the world who would tell you they never had anyone to do that for them, nevermind their father.

But we did.  We had a father who was present, from the day we were born until the last moment of his life.  A father who loved us, and who told us we were loved.  Who supported us, listened to us, encouraged us, occasionally tried to discourage me from certain things, with…..inconsistent results.

But we did, we had a father who, through all of these actions and emotions, made us feel safe.

Maybe it was because he grew up in a household where HE felt safe, where he had a family that provided that same security for him, where he knew he was loved.

Or maybe it’s just because that’s who he was.

~

You all knew Dad in some way, found some part of his personality to love and admire.  For many of us it was his humor, his drive to seek out a good pun, to find something funny in the absurd, to share things that brought him joy and laughter.

For some it was his meticulousness, his discipline in the work that he did, whether that was writing code, writing historical fiction, editing someone else’s writing, or even maintaining the schedules that just make life a little easier.  I still get a reminder that pops up on our shared Google calendar, Ding! every three months, that reminds me to change the furnace filter.  Thanks, Dad, you’re right yet again, it was filthy.

So many of us loved his joie de vivre, his ability to pursue the things that made him happy, to live a life he loved, whether it was adventuring out as a tourist into different parts of the world, road tripping to visit family in western Canada, or just sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop, researching and writing about Roman history.

He loved meeting people, learning about everyone else’s adventures, peeking into their lives and sharing his own.  Not a single person who joined us at our dining room table was ever a stranger, nor a friend — they just all became family.

I think it is safe to say all of us loved him for his kindness.

~

I am sometimes still surprised that there was enough medication in that tiny cup – honestly, in the entire world – to stop such a huge, boundless, endlessly loving heart.

And I hope, with all my heart, that when I mixed those medications on August 8th, when I handed him that cup, and when he drank it, that while he did it, he felt safe.

I think he did.

Dad wasn’t afraid to die.  Why fear the inevitable?  None of us are getting out of this alive, and even with all the denials, avoidances, and euphemisms in the world, nothing changes that fact.  We talked openly about his death, just as we had talked openly about Mom’s.  We all stepped over those thresholds together, as a family, as a unit, and that brutal honestly, those difficult conversations, those were gifts.

Those are gifts, and so many of us miss out on the opportunity to experience that simply because we live in a culture that does pretty much everything to avoid talking about death.

No, he wasn’t afraid to die.  He was just really, really annoyed that he ran out of time.

But he knew that it was better that his time be finite, and every moment a blessing and a joy, than to experience time as a hated enemy, ensnaring him in pain, and illness, and grief, until IT decided when to stop.

Dad was able to be Dad, to be Robert Stephen Phillips, a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a writer, a traveler, a jokester, a friend, right up to the very last moment.

And that, in the end, was his gift to himself.

~

Just because he and Mom are now gone, it does not mean that they are not still with us.  They will always be with us.  And in their memory, we will always be safe.