Lessons from 94 Years of Life--Thank You Daddy
I haven’t called to wish my Daddy a Happy Father’s Day since 2016. That’s the year he joined Mama and so many other family members and dear friends who had gone on before him.
Daddy was 94 when he died. Even until the end, his blood pressure and heart rate would have been the envy of people half his age. He still pumped weights, “took his exercises,” and walked the roughly paved roads of his Six Lakes neighborhood in the boondocks of East Texas as much as his hip would allow. He’d sustained a broken hip in his 80s that could have easily taken him out. It didn’t even come close.
He was convinced my sister and I were in cahoots to put him “in a home” permanently when we insisted he go to a physical rehab program before returning to the house that he’d purchased and lived in since right after Mama died in 1983. We knew better. There was no convincing Bill Vickery to do anything he didn’t want to do.
Yes, he was alone in the woods with the closest neighbor half a mile away. But that was his place. No amount of brochures featuring pictures of happy residents playing dominoes and enjoying buffet lunches together would convince him to consider anything other than living out his days at 8 Mockingbird Lane, Romayor, Texas.
You learn from your parents – what to do and what not to do. They teach you by their words and their actions whether they mean to or not. Here are some things I learned from a man who served our country in World War II, lived through the Great Depression, endured scorching heat and searing cold hundreds of feet above ground as an iron worker to make a living for his family, lost the love of his life to lung cancer after 22 years of marriage, and lived the rest of his years enjoying life in the Big Thicket where he was born and raised, trying in the best way he knew how to take care of his brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and anyone he called “friend.”
Your word is your bond.
Contracts and formal agreements were necessary evils of a society in which people don’t trust one another. In his day, as he would say, “your word was your bond.” That seems right in line with the scripture in Proverbs that says, “A good reputation is of greater value than gold.” A good reputation is based largely in a person’s commitment to truth and integrity. If you say you will do it, you do it. That was a given to Daddy, and he had little tolerance for liars.
Say, “I love you.”
Daddy’s mom died when he was little. His dad was a hard, strict taskmaster. “But,” Daddy said, “I knew he loved us.” I don’t know if Aaron Vickery ever said those words, “I love you,” to his son Wilburn. I do know Daddy never failed to say them to me. Actions speak louder than words, but words matter. When words come hard and you haven’t learned that language firsthand, mustering the courage to break the cycle and say, “I love you,” is heroic.
We say, “I love you,” a lot in our family. I learned from my daddy...that’s what you do.
Hard work is good.
When I was little, I would hear Daddy get up way before sunrise, pull on his Carhartt overalls, eat a hot breakfast made with love by Mama, grab his Thermos of hot black coffee and head off to a frigid day straddling thick steel beams looming far above the ground. One time, Mama got a call from the hospital asking if she had a husband named Wilburn Vickery. He’d fallen a couple of stories from where he was working, had a concussion, and couldn’t remember anything. He recovered and kept working. One time the blade of a circular saw used for cutting steel flew off and slashed Daddy’s leg and gut so deeply, doctors were amazed he was alive. If not for his fellow iron workers holding his bleeding body up on that beam until they could get a gurney hoisted up to get him, Daddy would have fallen to his death. After a lengthy, painful recovery, he went back to work. He never understood why able-bodied people would choose not to work. He took pride in his work and in providing for our family.
Be generous.
I am still getting mail from the organizations daddy donated to. If there was a TV commercial talking about children battling cancer, he would send money. If there were wounded veterans in need of wheelchairs, he would send money. If there was a natural disaster and people left homeless, he would send money. And, yes, he even sent money to preachers on TV. Every time I would visit, he’d pull some bills from his wallet and ask, “Do you need money, baby?” I’m sure it would take more than my ten fingers to count the number of folks he helped through the years – he just didn’t talk about it. It made him happy to help people. From early roots of poverty to the modest income of an ironworker and, in his later years, a fixed income, Daddy proved that you don’t need to be rich to be generous.
Trust in Jesus.
Daddy and I had vastly different taste when it came to religious preferences. He thought church should be rowdy and loud and demonstrative. Growing up, I always swore when I got big (that never happened), I would go to a church like my friend Marion went to where it was calm and people didn’t yell and scream and run up and down the aisles. After Mama died and I had moved out of Texas, I would brace myself when I’d go to visit Daddy, knowing I was in for a few days of channel surfing that would alternate between classic black-and-white Westerns and TV evangelists, some of whom would have fit perfectly in the “running up and down the aisles” churches of my youth. But though our tastes and even many of our convictions were at odds, the rock-bottom core of Daddy’s faith was this – you can trust in Jesus. A common question, in one form or another, was, “Have you talked to Jesus about it?” I’m inclined to listen to a man who lived 94 years. That’s a lot of time to learn who you can trust.
God, thank you for my daddy – for his long, rich life and all that he taught me. Thank you most of all that I never once wondered if he loved me. That is a gift. Amen.
