A Standard of Relation

I'm going to share the words of a very special guest today: my big brother, Joel. He took on the extremely difficult task of delivering a eulogy on behalf of our family at our dad's funeral a few days ago. I am grateful to him for shouldering a responsibility that I would not have been strong enough to bear. He did it so perfectly. I could think of nothing to add or to subtract.

In Remembrance of Severt Ole Score

November 22, 1928 - July 26, 2014

a eulogy delivered by Joel K. Score, July 30, 2014

 
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Mom and dad tell me that when I was three I said I was going to be a pastor so that I could talk in church. I wasn’t sure I would speak today. But fifty years after that declaration, perhaps it’s time.

I miss him. Dad. Severt. That’s true this week, and it’s been true these past few years as we’ve lost him, further and further, to memory loss and confusion.

In planning this service, we tried to guess how many people would come. In practical terms, that means how many sandwiches we need.

But it also means thinking about family—who’s still living, how well they’re getting around, how widely they’re scattered.

It means thinking about all of the places dad has been and the people he’s known—in this church and this town, in the nearly twenty churches he’s served (almost a score! How could I speak about dad without one pun?)—all of those churches in half a dozen towns.

It means thinking about the places he lived earlier in his life and places he made friends while passing through.

It’s also meant thinking about the caregivers who have helped dad and helped us, his family, so much in these last years: at Legends, where he’s been in memory care since May 2012; at St. Croix Hospice, whose team gave him a jump-start last winter and gave us advice and solace this past week; at Country Manor, whose nurses, aides, and social workers scarcely had time to get to know dad; and here at Bethlehem, which sent pastors and volunteers to visit him.

I’d been thinking that those of you who have known Severt only in these St. Cloud years have missed out on a lot. And you have—

You missed the practical joker who rewired a seminary classmate’s radio so that it could be switched on and off only from the next room (I missed that too—I was two when he graduated).

You missed the young husband who, in a mix of necessity and the joy of making things, crafted much of the furniture for his and mom’s first homes from salvaged crates and other cheap wood (I still have some of it, including the toddler-size table, chairs, and bookcase he built me).

You missed the father who taught us what he knew but also how to look up what he didn’t know, and to look up more than one point of view. The father who told impossibly long shaggy-dog stories to entertain us, but really to keep us quiet, on long drives to visit relatives. The father who, when we were misbehaving, might introduce us as “Bea’s kids from her first marriage.”

You missed more building—the elaborate camper custom-fit to the roof and tailgate of our Pontiac station wagon; the smaller pushing structure that turned our red wagon into a racecar.

You missed exotic cuisine—the foraged mushrooms that mom would have nothing to do with; the pickled stems of purslane (a succulent weed that’s tastier than some standard vegetables); the rhubarb and backyard-grape wine of which some parishioners did not approve.

You missed thoughtful conversations about how much people miss when they read any meaningful text as strictly literal.

You missed some periods of depression.

You missed most of his art-making.

And you missed forty years of sermons—some inspirational, some entertaining, some meandering discussions of Hebrew or Greek etymology, some just plain embarrassing to the family members who appeared in them.

But you also—especially you caregivers—helped me see how much was still there.

The activities director at Legends, Blaire, recognized how important it was to Severt to make things with his hands and to help people, and she sought out ways for him to continue doing both.

Dad had made some things since coming to St. Cloud, but mostly he accumulated materials for sculptures and other projects that were never realized.

He filled a two-car garage with tools and rocks, blocks of wood and bits of plastic, prescription jars filled with golf tees or pen springs. He could pick up most anything there and tell you what he saw in it, or how it might fit with that car part in the corner to make a bird or solve a workshop problem. But he could no longer follow through and put the pieces together. They just piled up.

Cleaning out that garage, and (necessarily) discarding much of the stuff, was among the hardest things I’ve ever done. I could see what had drawn him to most of the scraps—their geometry or color or heft in the hand. His belief in the value of simple things, the dignity of materials, his abhorrence of waste, was everywhere evident.

But to every thing there is a season.

It was in speaking with caregivers this past week, and with friends who’ve offered support, some of whom never met dad, that I decided I should say something here.

I spoke with Wayne, a nursing assistant at Legends, about how we resemble our fathers, whether we want to or not, and how eventually, if we’re lucky, we find ways in which that’s a good thing.

I saw how dad, when he could barely talk, charmed the staff at Country Manor, and how, when he stopped talking, and scarcely moved, those last three days, they saw dad in us, his family.

I’ll leave it to others here to speak of eternal life. 

I know my father lives on in the people whose lives he touched—in the family he loved, the friends he loved, in the strangers he loved.

He lives in me, as he long has, as my mother does, as others I love do. He lives in me not just as a relation—someone in my family, someone on my side—but as a standard of relation, a principle I use in finding my place in relation to other things and other people.

I don’t aim to duplicate dad’s life, but I evaluate others’ prescriptions for living in relation to what he and mom taught and exemplified.

In a commencement speech last year, the novelist George Saunders said, “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.”

Age, he said, may erode selfishness: “We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we’re not separate, and don’t want to be.”

So time may make us kinder, he said, but why wait? Start now. Go on with whatever else matters in your life, but be kind.

That fits with my sense of dad and what he valued. It fits with his short poem that we included in the memorial card. It fits with much of what he reminisced about as his memory failed.

The details weren’t always to be trusted. He recalled with gratitude all he’d learned from his brother-in-law Andy about fixing engines (I don’t doubt that)—then he mentioned that they’d invented the airplane (perhaps not).

But the important things were consistent: he believed in generosity, both material and of the spirit; he believed in inclusiveness and encouragement; he believed in kindness; he believed in love.

And if we live up to that, he’s with us.

Thank you all, so very much, for coming.