What My Father Taught Me

Susan Sturman - January 11, 2009

Preparing for a memorial service forces us to examine the question of what is immortality. In a Christian context, as the lessons today show, the first question that often comes up is that of physical immortality: the raising of a body. In my personal theology, that isn’t even in question. Our bodies are temporary vessels, tools we use to do the work we are given to do.

And I’m not quite sure what the immortality of the soul really looks like. I have grown beyond images of recognizable people with wings on their backs and harps in their hands, sitting in the sky on fluffy clouds. And the deeper theological imagery found in such writings as Revelations seems to me to be entirely allegorical.

In fact, what happens after we leave this earthly body and this earthly dwelling place is a mystery, and I am fairly content to let it remain so, at least as long as I am tethered here, in this body and on this earth.

The immortality I most believe in is what we leave behind in those that come after us.

What I learned from my father I will pass along to my children, and I strive to practice in my daily life, and thereby pass along to others as well.

Here is what I learned from my father:

I learned patience. That what we want doesn’t come automatically, nor without an effort on our part, and sometimes a sustained effort.

I also learned the value of impatience. To be demanding and not to suffer fools gladly as the saying goes, but mainly to be intolerant of my own shortcomings and to push myself to commit, to get the work done, and to do it well, and to do the work without delay.

I learned the classic Protestant work ethic (he was brought up in the Lutheran tradition, and by a very strict father): never allow leisure before all the work is accomplished. And when the work is accomplished, before looking for leisure, find the rest of the work that needs to get done. And do that first. In other words, I learned how to be a workaholic from my father.

Dad taught me the importance of completed work: do a thing thoroughly, think it all the way through, don’t skimp on the details. He taught me to dust not only around things, but to move things and dust under them, and to dust in the little crevasses as well. He taught me how to make a bed with proper hospital corners, and to take pride in it.

I learned to temper the lessons learned by my own wisdom and experience: as he softened the discipline his father exerted over him, I have softened my touch with my children….sometimes beyond what my father thought was quite advisable.

I learned to take responsibility for my actions, and to look for the right thing to do in all situations. And when I choose wrong, I learned to take responsibility for that and to clean it up.

I learned that family is an act of choice, and that it is a bond of love that far exceeds the bonds of genetics or of circumstance.

I learned that sometimes to withhold information is the best course. I also learned that it is not necessary to fear revelations, however imposing the secret may have seemed.

I learned to be persistent, tenacious. Dad was my touchstone, my sounding board, and most of the major decisions I’ve made in my life I’ve taken to him to test. He didn’t always agree, but I had to test my own resolve and push my ability to reason, and to stand my own ground in the face of his questions and sometimes his resistance. In so doing, I learned to be my own person.

Dad wasn’t always easy to be around, and I guess I learned a bit of that as well. He was impatient, and did his share of complaining when things didn’t meet his standards. He was irascible, and not always consistent. He could be self-centered and boy, could he hold a grudge. He was estranged from his sister for decades. But (the love he had finally overcame that, and) he was willing to reconcile, and the joy of reclaiming his family completely erased all the old animosity. I must admit, there were moments when I became a touch jealous of the pride he took in each of his newly rediscovered nieces and nephew’s accomplishments, until I realized that he had a lot of pent-up joy to recover, express and share.

From my dad I learned to revel in storytellers. I’ll never be the raconteur my father was, and my one, true, lasting regret is that we never quite managed to get all Dad’s stories recorded. I’ll regret that as long as I live, because his stories were truly interesting. His stories told much of the history of the American 20th century, and he told them with wit and a passion for the telling that entranced everyone who had the privilege to listen.

I have thought, in these past few days, about the hole that he leaves in not only my world, but in the world. That with the passing of his generation, the world seems so much emptier. And then I began to realize another lesson Daddy taught me: that the world is still filling up with interesting and valuable people. Dad had more interest in those younger than himself. He became great friends with our au pairs, who were easily young enough to be his grandchildren; technically they could probably have been his great-grandchildren. He took them up into his life and joined them in theirs with interest and verve. Mom was such a social force that Dad could simply sit back and enjoy the ride, and when Mom passed on ten years ago, we never expected him to survive very long. But then he surprised us, and created a new social order for himself, with young people at its center. My dad knew the social network of the Au Pairs in Port Washington far better than I ever will. He created his own Facebook page not so long ago! I suppose that this technological feat shouldn’t be surprising from a man who was a founder of the Numerical Control Society, which was closely associated with moving the world of manufacturing into the digital era. But still! I haven’t figured out facebook yet!

Dad was a conventional man in so many ways. I learned the importance of form and convention from him: Always mind your manners, never wear trousers to the Yacht Club, observe birthdays, send thank you cards, return phone calls (well, I guess Mom really taught me that, and I guess I learned from Dad that I really Should do these things but somehow don’t always get around to them). He taught me to be independent, and not to ask for favors, but to offer them freely. He taught me to learn and absorb the ‘rules’ of society and to live by them. But he was full of unconventional surprises: despite the fact that he couldn’t swim and didn’t own a boat, he took lessons and earned his sailing certificate from the Power Squadron at age 70. In the last ten years of his life, he traveled to France, Cambodia, took a cruise to Central America, made many trips to New Orleans, South Carolina, and Washington DC. The funny thing was that when he wasn’t galavanting around the planet he often stayed very close to home. He rarely travelled into the city, though he loved the opportunity to drive out to the Hamptons and Montauk, places we spent a great deal of time during our childhood.

But Dad was always a traveler: in searching through the thousands of photographs (photography was his greatest delight and hobby) for the photo montage we put together, Bill and I found that there was rarely a year in his life that he didn’t travel somewhere, be it the mountains of Vermont or the battlefields of the civil war, or Nova Scotia, or Lake Frontenac in Canada.

In fact, I can credit Dad with teaching me the joy of travel, of putting myself Somewhere Else, and seeing who I am there, and what That Place is like.

Dad’s health was failing these last few years. His heart was weakening, he had difficulty breathing, difficulty walking, and suffered from awful insomnia and the concurrent daytime drowsiness that drove him beyond frustration. But though he was distressed, he was not depressed. He was fully satisfied with his life. He had had a wonderful marriage of 53 years to a woman that was truly the love of his life. He learned that he could in fact love gain, even after Mom died, and I think he learned that hearts can always be broken—and continue to love. He knew how deeply his family loved him, and we all know how deeply he loved and cherished us, and how proud he was of us all. He was very clear with Bill and me that he was ready any day to meet his Maker. So I have no regrets on his behalf.

I will carry his love and his lessons and live by them, and thus he is forever a part of me and my world. That’s his immortality.

My father, Bill Stocker, was my bedrock, my touchstone, my refuge, my home. In the first hours after his death I was stricken with the fear that with him gone I could not find the courage to walk forward in my life.

But as I held his hand, so familiar even after the life had gone out of it, I took from him that final lesson: that he had taught me well, and given me all I need.