Family | Jody Ewing

I Can’t Believe “Dad Earl” is Really Gone

Yesterday, with his 11 kids and my mother surrounding him, my 2nd father, Earl Thelander — who’s been a part of my life for more than 25 years — died as the result of a cowardly thief who burglarized my grandparent’s former country home (which was mostly empty and now belongs to my folks), for a $10 piece of copper piping. The burglar didn’t bother to shut off the gas before cutting the copper gas line, and let the home fill will gas for the inevitable explosion.

“Dad Earl” — as my four siblings and I always called him — wanted to live. And, he had everything to live for. He was healthy, happy, and couldn’t wait until his tomatoes finished ripening on the vines. He’d planned to give some to each of us and looked forward to the BLT sandwiches my mom always made for him.

Yes, he wanted to live. Even after the explosion, he somehow managed to crawl through the fire, climb into his pick-up, and drive the two miles back home in town, where my mother then immediately took him to the hospital. With both his knees burned clear through to the bone, he’d managed to make it back to her.

Yes, how Earl wanted to live.

Yesterday, we each took turns holding the tips of his fingers … one of the few parts on his body without the full-thickness, third-degree burns, and we told him again and again how much we loved him, how much he’d taught us about life and respect and hard work and looking out for one another and reaching out to help a neighbor in need.

I shared 28 years with my first father and 28 years with “Dad Earl.” Both my fathers died on Labor Day weekend. Both died the Saturday before Labor Day. Both died unexpected and extremely tragic deaths.

Who was this person who exchanged $10 worth of copper piping for a good man’s life? What right did he have to make such a gentle and loving man suffer so?

We will find him. I tell you this with certainty; we will find the one who did this to our father and he will be brought to justice. God, the pain this has brought to my family.

Earl, you will always be with us, in all ways. The heavens opened and the angels wept down upon us the day they gently carried you through the clouds and then lay you down to rest here while we prayed and held your hand and they prepared your place in heaven. And when they came back to take you home, they opened your eyes one last time to hold with those of the woman you so loved ~ so that as you ascended to meet your God you knew you were ever safe and wrapped within an everlasting love that would never die.

It’s 5 a.m. Do YOU know where your parents are?

Family

My children (much to their intense displeasure) knew exactly where I was at 5 a.m. today.

Outside.

In the dark.

In my pajama bottoms. (And that old raggedy sweatshirt and tennis shoes that haven’t seen daylight in three years.)

Up in the pear tree. (And no, I’m not a partridge.)

What, you ask, is one doing in a pear tree at five o’clock in the morning dressed partially in p.j.s and partly in worn, tattered clothing?

Why, rescuing a stray cat, of course! And an injured one at that.

And why would my children be aware I’m perched like a partridge in a pear tree at five o’clock in the morning — especially when one has school the next day and the other has to be on time for work three hours later (incidentally, a job with the school district)…

Because I roused them from their sound sleeps beseeching them to help, of course!

The 16-year-old’s response: “Ask Jennifer.”

Jennifer’s response: “Moooommmmm!!!!”

Luckily for me (and as it turns out, the cat) the pear tree just happens to be outside Jennifer’s window and her window just happened to be open. Who could resist the sounds of that forlorn meow, meow, meow.

I don’t dislike cats, I just don’t happen to own any. My dogs have never been around cats before, which is why when they found one sitting on our steps at 5 a.m. they immediately decided it had no business being inside their fenced-in yard. They did what I assume any other dog would do: they chased it up a tree.

Unsure whether they’d gotten to it first, of course I had no choice but to climb into the pear tree to get it.

I’m also unsure if raw bacon is good for cats, but that’s the only thing I could think of that would carry enough of a smell to get the cat to come down to a point where I could reach him or her. (Hey, it was dark, and I’m no more a veterinarian than I am a partridge.)

I’m pleased to report that with Jennifer holding the aluminum ladder steady while this fear-of-heights animal lover did her good deed for the day, we succeeded in rescuing the cat from the tree and sending it on its merry way. It did have a minor cut on its behind, but Jennifer said it looked more like a scratch from a cat fight rather than something our dogs could have done.

All in all, I have to admit the whole ordeal was quite exhilarating. If you haven’t sat in a tree for a while with stars still sprinkled across the sky, you’re really missing out on something wonderful. It made my whole day.

But probably not as much as it did for the cat — who, my neighbor later told me, had been in and out of both the pear and the apple tree for three days trying to figure out how to get out of our yard.

At least he didn’t go hungry.

My Favorite Time of Year

Family

I can still remember the day I made my sister Kim so angry she cried. That’s when I knew how much she really loved me.

We’d gone to her home for a barbecue on her deck, even though we knew it would probably storm. She always starts her regular family barbecues in late spring, and continues to hold them – often several times per week – until early fall. Kim loves her outside barbecues as much as she loathes the season’s unexpected guests — those dark and looming mammatus clouds that hunker down above her deck whenever she goes to fire up the grill. Kim hates thunderstorms and tornadic weather as much as I’ve always thrived on it.

It’s not that I want a tornado to actually hit — I just want to see a funnel cloud up there somewhere. Or perhaps see a tornado touch down on the edge of town without doing any damage before it lifts back into the clouds.

That day at my sister’s, we’d just finished eating when the sky turned very dark and the wind came up, fast. Kim went in to check the weather, and came back out to announce we were in a tornado warning. She wanted us all to go to the basement. If there’s a tornado warning in the area, you can be sure to find Kim and her kids somewhere in their basement. We all said no, we weren’t going yet. And then the town’s siren went off. It means, of course, a tornado has been spotted in the area and for everyone to immediately seek shelter.

Kim grabbed the kids — hers, mine, anyone’s within reach, and screamed for me to follow. Instead, I followed her husband off the deck and out to the corner. As a volunteer fire fighter, one of his responsibilities was also being a tornado spotter; he was doing his job. I wanted to help.

After Kim got the kids safely to the basement, she came back up long enough to yell at me to get inside, while I shouted to her husband (over the high winds) “Where is it? I can’t see it yet!” Kim then called to her husband, probably thinking if she could get him inside, I would follow suit. It didn’t work. She’d begun to cry as she hollered at both of us, but we stood there on the corner, unwilling to budge. She went back to the basement.

The sirens eventually stopped, and I still hadn’t seen a thing. I know I’m a meteorologist’s worst nightmare, the kind of person they warn you about, the kind that often get other people hurt, or even killed, because of their inexperience and fascination with storms. But I can’t seem to help myself. It’s a fascination I’ve had since childhood from that day at my grandma’s house (on the very edge of town) when the tornado siren went off. (My very first memory of a tornado siren.) My father yelled to us “Hit the basement!” and I remember him scooping up my Aunt Mabel on the way and carrying her frail, hunched-over body down the steps under one arm like one might tote a small child.

Once he deposited her safely in the basement and made sure the family was safe, “he” went back upstairs to watch. I tried to follow him but my grandmother wouldn’t let me. Dad later told me he saw the tornado touch down west of town, out past the cornfields that ran parallel to my grandmother’s home, and I was furious that I’d missed it.

A couple years back I took an online distance education Meteorology course through Iowa State University, and was fortunate to have as my instructor the great ISU climatologist Dr. Elywnn Taylor. Before moving to Iowa, Dr. Taylor was a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Alabama, and his voice is well known throughout the Midwest from his radio broadcasts of crop-weather and other educational information. He brought to his classes (which I viewed online and through pre-recorded CD-ROMs) a real passion for his subject and a terrific sense of humor. If I was passionate about the weather before, I came away from Dr. Taylor’s class with a whole new appreciation of the upper troposphere and St. Elmo’s Fire.

The picture here is one I took during the class. Dr. Taylor gave extra credit if we wanted to submit weather photos (though he advised us not to risk our lives doing so).

I’m still here.

My sister Kim likes to take photos, too. But I doubt she’s got any like this on her computer desktop. At least not ones she took herself.

We’re expecting strong storms here today. We had a real good one last week. When it first hit, my daughter called to tell me about it; she called from her cell phone in Kim’s basement.

Jody

Lori’s poem seems right for Memorial Day

Authors, Family

Back in November 1987, my sister Lori wrote a poem about our father, Don Ewing, who had died two months before in a tragic accident. My father had recently returned to Iowa, and for a while took turns staying with each of us kids. His death – less than two weeks before his 51st birthday – left us all wishing we could go back and change some things.

Lori actually wrote this poem as a song, complete with a chorus. On this Memorial Day, it just seemed appropriate to put it out there. And yes, our father also was a vet, having served with the U.S. Marine Corps.

He Touched My Life (Memory of Dad)
by Lori Mathes

He Stood tall, I seemed so small –
but I knew he’d always be there through it all.
He loved the thought of living,
and he had so much to give,
but I didn’t understand his way to live.

He touched my life, and I didn’t know it.
He touched my heart, and I didn’t show it.
And all that mattered to him,
were the things I wouldn’t give,
Oh I wish my time with him I could re-live.

He did things his way –
He took life by storm.
But he always wound up near me, tired and worn.
I never took the time, to realize you see,
I was so caught up in life — and in me.

He touched my life, and I didn’t know it.
He touched my heart, and I didn’t show it.
And all that mattered to him,
were the things I wouldn’t give,
Oh I wish my time with him I could re-live.

I didn’t ever notice, he was dying deep inside,
that he needed someone to lean on,
and still feel he had his pride.
But he would not go to someone –
No for him that wouldn’t do.
His heart ached for his family,
the only one he ever knew.

He tried to make me listen,
and to understand his pain,
but instead he got my doubts, and
I wondered what he’d gain…
So he left that day a hurt man,
and it makes me very sad –
for that was the last time I ever saw my Dad.

He touched my life, and I didn’t know it.
He touched my heart, and I didn’t show it.
And all that mattered to him,
were the things I wouldn’t give,
Oh I wish my time with him I could re-live…
And all that mattered to him,
were the things I wouldn’t give,
Oh I wish my time with him I could re-live.

I Love You, Dad

A Christmas Poem (to my Family 2004)

Family, Writing

I got an unexpected, heartfelt Christmas gift from my sister Lori this year. She gave the same gift to my brother as well as our other two sisters. Lori is the middle sister — the one we always called “tattletale” — and her gift made me realize some things I hadn’t thought about before:

1) Lori doesn’t take her family — or where she came from — for granted.

2) Lori doesn’t yet realize how talented she is.

The gift was a framed poem she had written herself. She called it “A Christmas Poem (to my Family 2004),” had it printed on parchment paper with holly in the corners, and signed it — I Love You, Lori — at the bottom beneath the date.

This isn’t the first time Lori has written poems for us. She wrote one after our father was killed and it read like a personal letter she’d written to him. She told him all the things she wished she’d said before he died. That was the first time I realized my sister’s talent as a writer.

I plan to hang her Christmas poem on my office wall, and thought I’d share it here. If you’ve got family, I’m sure you can relate.

If you’re unable to view the image above, I’ve included the words below.

A Christmas Poem (to my Family 2004)

I wish you Merry Christmas, this poem’s my “Gift” to you

I’m sure that won’t surprise you . . . cuz my poems are nothing new.

So often life goes by too fast, that no-one figures out

Why they were put together or what family’s all about.

We’re not a family by some “chance”, there’s nothing that needs fixed

We each were chosen carefully . . . each adding to the mix.

He knew we each held something — A quality we had

One we would seek, and pass along . . . some trait of Mom and Dad.

We take these traits they gave us and spread out on this earth

But never really think about the miracle of birth.

A birth is how we carry on, the traits we each possess,

The special gifts God gave us, all each different from the rest.

That’s why there IS a Christmas . . . A special day each year,

To celebrate the ONE, whose birth gave ALL that you hold dear.

I think what was intended . . . is we each would do our part,

To take time for each other, which is the families HEART.

So this is why I want to say, and know there is no test

I’m glad he placed me in this group, among the very Best!!

There’s not another Family I would choose to call my own,

I feel so very lucky and there’s just – “NO PLACE LIKE HOME.”

I’m proud to be a part of you, I’m proud to call you mine,

And with you all around me I am blessed at Christmas time.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks, Lori. Me, too.

Jody