If, Then

This song, "Watch Them Grow", by Zach Gill, is amazing. I really want you to listen to it. If you do, though, do me a favor and put in earphones, or listen to it when no one else is around because I want you to feel free to really get into this song. Okay? Ya with me? Do it. Here goes:

http://www.ilike.com/artist/Zach+Gill/track/Watch+Them+Grow

I'll admit that I have a hard time listening to this song without tearing up. You can let me know if you did, too, so I don't feel so lonely. You see, every time I listen to this song, I end up playing out this little scenario in my mind:

If I were getting married tomorrow, then I would bet when it was time to have that special dance with my father, he'd be there, looking handsome and smiling from ear-to-ear, and he'd have picked this song that we both love, but it would be a surprise to me, because that's totally something he would have done, and then with the lights low because while I like to be where the party is, I'm definitely not the party, he'd take my hand, the world around me would fade and we'd dance to it.

So, yeah. This song gets me.

Anyway, for all you daddy's with little girls, tuck this one away and maybe even the idea to surprise your daughter with this song when you take her hand and lead her to the dance floor on her wedding day. And for all you single girls that don't necessarily want to dance with your sweet daddy to "Butterfly Kisses", consider this one.

P.S. Listening to this today in the car, my two-year-old totally started singing the "Mm mm mm" part of this song. Yeah, my heart was a sloppy mess after that.

On Our Time Here, Our Legacy and Our Sunshine

This is not a typical Music Monday post. I'll admit that I've been a little scared to write this post. I think in my mind, I knew it could be a combination of two or three posts and it means a lot to me and so I procrastinated. Here I am though. If you keep reading, know that while writing this, my brain has been split between laundry, dishes, beans and cornbread for dinner and two crazy boys as I wrote this. It's not the most cohesive thing I've ever written, but, hang with me. And also, I reserve the right to edit it later when I have time, like I just did right now.

First off, let me say that nothing has been more humbling to me in my life than the following: grieving and parenting. I've written here before a little bit about my life, a little bit about my story. However, to catch the rest of you up, my Dad died ten years ago when I was a young woman of 20. Dad was 54. I had been overseas for the year and made it home 17 hours before he died. Even though the septic state I found him in was shocking to me in every way, he was still alive and I got to be there when he breathed his last breath.

I am told by many that knew him well and that know me that I'm like him. They also tell me that I favor his side of the family in looks and that I look like my grandmother, his mother. Just in recent years, looking back though, I see that our dispositions, passions and interests are very similar too. Both my parents like to read, like music and like people. Dad loved those things. So do I.

Being the mother of two and watching my oldest son grow into the constantly curious and beloved boy he is, I've been thinking lately about how I am impacting and shaping him for life, specifically when it comes to music since this is a Music Monday. It's no secret that I love it. I love hearing it, seeing it, and even occasionally making it. It was a priority in our house growing up. Dad would often pick a record perfect for his mood from his collection and play it for us, sometimes dancing my Mom around the room, even when she acted like she didn't like it. He took pride in cleaning his records, playing his records and telling the stories behind them. Those stories are some of my favorite memories of him.

I started thinking about all the major influences in my life, when it comes to music. The first and foremost influence was Dad. He taught me how to play "Green Onions" on the piano when I was maybe five. I had already been playing piano for a year by then. In the car, he would crunch his ice with his teeth and rap his right hand on the console between us to the beat, but especially to those songs that really got to him. I used to sit there and watch him feel it.

Dad really liked rock-and-roll. He was an even bigger Beatles fan than I am. He loved jazz and soul like Ray Charles and Dave Bruebeck. He was white, no doubt about it, but he had the soul of a brother deep down inside him. I think that's where I get it too.

Mom is a country girl through and through. When she drives up here for a visit, her car stereo is usually playing some country radio station. She likes old hymns, she likes Hank Williams and she likes Johnny Cash. She also likes the newer "pop" country. That's where I stop being able to hang with her. Dad couldn't handle the twang like she can. Folk, yes. Twang, no. I get that love of a simple folk song from her, I believe.

My sister is eleven years older than I am. She was a child of the 70's. That makes her an 80's teenage connoisseur of rock music. I get my knowledge and love of Billy Joel, the Police, the Carpenters, Tina Turner and Jane Fonda workouts, from her. Her high school boyfriend, Bob, worked at the record shop in the mall. He drove a Firebird and smoked Marlboro Reds. I always thought Bob was cool. My mom, did not.

And then, there's my brother. He got that same soul from Dad. He likes his music to thump and thump so loud you can feel it in your chest. I believe I was exposed to rap and hip-hop mostly from him. 2LiveCrew, NWA, RunDMC, Beastie Boys and Wu Tang Clan are all things I never would have heard, had it not been for him. While he likes his beat, he also is really well-rounded in liking old stuff, indie stuff and just good music in general. And, thank goodness for that. P.S. He totally wore a Starter jacket in junior high.

To keep with the family theme here, there are my two cousins, Amy and David. Amy was born in '74, my brother, Michael '76, David '77 and me '78. That made us all one year apart in school. Since I was the youngest of all of us, that gave me the perfect place to watch and listen when it came not only to music, but also when it came to life. They didn't mean to teach me through their successes and failures, but they did. I'm grateful.

We had a rare closeness for cousins. I've said this here before, but they were as close to me as brothers and sisters might be, can be, could be. Amy was the oldest of us younger four. When I was about 14, she gave me a tape with Willie Nelson, Bob Marley and some others that I can't remember now. "Whiskey River" had never taken my mind before Amy told me it could and later would. Life's journey took her down a punk rock road and toward the boys that like to skateboard. And, she married the best one alive. The rest of us kind of followed that way in some way or another. That too, the punk rock scene, shaped me and the music I listened to.

I remember David going through a phase of liking classic rock. I rode to Central High summer school with him every morning that one summer he went through that phase. We seriously rocked some Led Zeppelin in his maroon-colored CJ-7. It would play so loud, I couldn't even hear myself think. I just sat there in the passenger seat listening, trying to teach myself how to properly inhale a cigarette.

So, to bring this all back around to grieving and parenting - music. In Estonia, as I grieved the news of my Aunt Angie's advanced breast cancer diagnosis, the passing of friends Wade and Katy, and the news that I'd be coming home early from an experience I wasn't quite ready to leave - music. After the phone call, scrambling to get me packed through the night and on a plane the next day with a DiscMan full of new batteries, I switched planes in Copenhagen - more music. I got off that plane in Little Rock and was taken straight to the hospital and although jet-lagging, it was morning to me. I got all the courage I could to go into that ICU room and sit in the quiet with my unresponsive father. There was so much I was dying to tell him.

So, I did just that. Sitting bedside, holding his hand, I told him about my year. In between asking him to stay, I'd rest my forehead on his knuckles and then beg for him to stay. A nurse had come in and encouraged me to talk to him because they say that your brain is the last organ to go. I was convinced he could hear me. I am convinced that he heard me.

At one point I delicately pulled myself up toward him so as not to disturb all the tubes, and tenderly kissed his forehead. Please wake up I begged and prayed. I wanted to put my face right next to his and keep it there, but I was afraid of hurting him somehow so I didn't. So, I sat back down in my chair in disbelief that this was happening. In the early hours of the morning, I sat close by his bed and sang to him a thing that he would sometimes say to me whether as a goodbye or signing off in an email. I sang to him, "You Are My Sunshine."

If you click that link, it takes you to Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan's duet of this classic. That picture of the record above is a gloriously old two-sided Johnny Cash record. It was my dad's.

It's hard to write this. I hope that Y'all would understand and get from this how precious this life is. I had 20 years with that man who called me his Sunshine. That's not near long enough, but in those years under his wing, he left a distinct mark on me, a stamp of a very real thing that was born out of what he was passionate about, his love of music. I can't complete this post without adding that his love of music spilled out into his faith. He served as a volunteer worship coordinator at his church until the very end. This picture is of him at church, serving, and was given to me by my cousin, Amy, in this frame she found.


Words don't do justice to how grateful I am for the legacy that was left for me through my father's life. While too short, I was certainly molded and blessed by it and was shown the importance of how precious life is. Thanks, Dad. Love and miss you. To pieces.

Spuds

Last night, after taking baked potatoes out of the oven, I was reminded of my Dad. He was a skilled baked potato "dresser" and had his technique down to an art form. First, he would gently and methodically karate chop down the hot potato, still wrapped in foil. Then, he'd flip it and do that again on the other side. After that, he would roll the potato out of the foil and onto the dinner plate. The tenderized potato would then receive a slice down the middle and a good smash from either end. After that, he'd slather it with all the fixin's. I remember that his potato always looked better than mine too. Sometimes, he ate the skin, sometimes, he didn't. It's funny what we remember about those we care about, sometimes, huh? I like the surprise of it too. It's like an unexpected little gift, the gift of a memory.

So Yeah, Big Shoes To Fill

Just like I couldn't believe what I was about to do, getting up to speak at my father's funeral in front of hundreds just days after returning from Estonia, I can't believe it has been ten years today, March 3, that my sweet Daddy died. I was 20 years old.

I had never been so shocked in my life. My mind had never gone to the "what ifs" about one of my parents dying. And there he lay in a hospital bed in ICU. He'd gone to the doctor on a Friday and they sent him home with flu-like symptoms. On Sunday, when my Mom realized that he had rapidly gotten worse and when this super sharp man stopped making sense, she rushed him to the ER. My Mom told me the last thing he talked about to the nurses and doctors while conscious was about me and how I was overseas and how proud he was of me. He said he was ready to get well because he was itching for me to get home so he could see me.

Several of my parents' physician friends had come by to check in on him and offer any help they could to the doctor's. Everyone was stumped. He'd become septic and his immune system had given up.

They believe that he'd gotten Strep A that went untreated for too long and had seeped into his blood stream. It ate slowly away at his organs causing them to fail. By the time they sent for me and I'd flown home only to go straight to the hospital to find him on dialysis, swollen from all the bags of IV medicines they were trying in desperation, hooked to a respirator, tubes and needles everywhere and unconscious. You can read a little more about it in this previous post.

It was mad of me to speak at his funeral because I had been living on nothing but pure adrenaline for about five straight days. I cried. Although I couldn't see the faces in the audience, I could hear their sobs for me and for him.

I talked mostly about his character. I had graduated from high school only three years before that day. I told about how upon graduation, I didn't receive a fancy ring or jewelry, a car or anything of the substantial financial significance that some of my friends had received. I received this framed behind glass:

Elizabeth

From the first time a father
reaches to take his daughter's
infant hand, she reaches up and
takes his heart. She never returns
it. He is her protector, her
provider, her knight, her hero.
In turn she is his lamb, his angel
on loan, his beauty of beauties.

June 29, 1996

These words were priceless and beyond any material thing I could ever have wanted. I felt like a princess. He was my protector. The tears came at the funeral service when it hit me while reading this to those in attendance, that my protector was gone. It came over me so that it didn't even matter if all those hundreds of people saw me cry about it. I was so grateful to know that this is how he saw himself to me and that I knew it, too.

He was a writer. I have an entire folder of letters and cards full of words, encouragement and advice from him in his wicked-cool penmanship. If ever there were a fire in our house, those letters would be the first thing rescued, kept tightly protected in our safe. I have almost an entire rung of paper that one of my teammates in Estonia printed of all his e-mails to me from that 1998-1999, his last year.

I used to be so tender about it that when asked about it or reminded of him, my whole body would tense up and fight like the dickens to keep a tear from surfacing. Eventually, I learned how unhealthy that was and then all I could do was cry about it. Now, I'm grateful that ten years later, I can talk freely about it although I do so with less and less frequency.

Remember that Sarah McLaughlin song where she sings about how people love ya when you're easy? One day I heard that song like I'd never heard it before. I just dug my heels in, fell on my face and begged that my open wound be healed. I was desperate to be "easy" again because everyone loves ya when you're easy, ya know...

We'll see. If I get the courage, I might share some of his letters here.

Here is his eulogy.

Thomas Jackson Milton

Funeral for Thomas J. (Tom) Milton, 54, of Little Rock, who died Wednesday, March 3, 1999, was held at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 6, at Fellowship Bible Church with Bill Parkinson officiating. Graveside services and burial were at Shrygley Cemetery at Coal Hill. Arrangements were under the direction of Roller-Chenal Funeral Home of Little Rock.

He was a native of Fort Smith, graduate of Fort Smith Senior High, Harding University, the National War College and the National Commander's Communication Center at the Pentagon.

He was a member of Fellowship Bible Church where he served as a production assistant in the worship ministry, a fund-raiser volunteer for Central Arkansas Radiation Therapy Institute (CARTI) and Young Life, vice president for On Hold Marketing and a past City Director of the city of Little Rock.

He was a retired Lieutenant Colonel with the United States Air Force Reserve after having served in the 188th Tactical Fighter Group and as squadron commander of the 96th Combat Support Squadron at the Little Rock Air Force Base.

Survivors include his widow, Mrs. Dee Milton; two daughters, Sherri Funk of Maumelle and Elizabeth Milton of Little Rock; one son, Michael Milton of Conway; two brothers and sisters-in-law, John and Mary Lee Milton of Urbana, Ill., and Jim and Wanda Milton of Conway; and numerous nieces and nephews.

Dad, I love ya and sometimes ache because I miss you so much.

To pieces.