A dedication: What I learned from my father’s pre-death ‘funeral’

When readers in Grand Rapids, Michigan, opened their local newspaper’s obituary section on March 12, they discovered an entry for my father, Robert Eleveld, that began, “8/3/1936 – Not Yet.”

My father, pictured brandishing a bottle of red, beamed at them from a notice our family dubbed the “nobit.”

“Hel-‘LO’!” he wrote, emulating the rhythm of his signature salutation. “As I write this notice, I am still with you, although my doctors have informed me that this status will change in the near future.” Dad explained that he had decided to upend end-of-life norms and hold a “celebration” instead, even though some might consider it “a bit odd.”

“Doing this brings me great joy,” he wrote, in the open invitation for the March 18 event the following weekend. “You are my friends, my colleagues, my family—the people I would absolutely love to share a roast beef sandwich, some shrimp and a beer with—on me!”

The idea for Dad’s pre-death send off first surfaced last Thanksgiving. He had never wished for a moment of mourning following his death. Well before he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in the spring of 2015, he would always say, “When I pass, don’t have a funeral. Just throw a party.” So as six of us sat around a table with Dad late last November absorbing the reality that he had all but exhausted his treatment options, we began to ponder when we might hold a posthumous cocktail party of sorts. That’s when my sister-in-law said, “What are we waiting for? Why don’t we have it while you’re still here?” Everyone around the table sort of lit up at the idea. And it stuck.

Of course, the question then was, when do you have such a party? At that moment, my father tired more easily than usual, but he was still quite mobile and mentally agile. No one wanted to wave the white flag of surrender a moment too soon. But on March 8, when his oncologist said he had four to six weeks to live, his partner of 24 years Michele McIsaac looked at Dad and said, “We can do this one of two ways—we can go out with a whimper or a bang.”

“Let’s go out with a bang!” he responded.

from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2rz2kEe