Dad's Gift to Us

December 2nd will always be special to me. It is Dad's birthday and in 2007, it represents number 70. Mom's party in Utica (celebrating her 70th) was incredible and I think it was probably the only gift mom ever wants: her children to be together and happy (also, she may have liked that we were forced to share a cabin among the 30 of us, but that's beside the point). Since we were all so young when Dad died in 1995 (yes, even mom was young!), it forces me to wonder what life would be like with him. And it is sometimes fun and sometimes sad to do just that. More recently, however, I have been thinking about what my life is like because of him.
I've had this stuck in my head for a while and it may come across "preachy" and self-righteous, but my point is to honor Dad and it is his birthday after all.
Dad's life and the life lessons that he taught can best be understood by knowing that his purpose in life was to be happy, healthy and holy.
For Cronley's, being happy has never been a result of something. I think about growing up in a household that some would describe as mass chaos, and some would describe as beautiful. Our happiness has always been a decision each day. Dad's example of the difficulty of the car business (understatement of the century), to resisting the temptation to change locations, to working for someone less qualified than himself, to the pressure of being the sole financial provider had to be hard. And yet, each morning it was off to work as if it was his first day on the job. Happiness is never a guarantee or a goal, but a decision dad made each day and I think on the whole, we are pretty good at this still today.
To be healthy is something we all want. You feel good when you are hitting the gym, or running trails and to be sure, it is our responsibility to do this. Now Dad couldn't keep up with me on a run (let alone Joe or John), and he would get wooped by Pete Goethals in tennis, so it's pretty safe to say that each of the girls would trounce him on the court as well. But Dad knew about relationship health better than anyone else I've met to date. People knew where they stood with Dad because they knew Dad. There was no question about his intentions and he never schemed. What you see is what you get. If Dad told you he was hurt, you knew you had hurt him. When he forgave you, you knew he had forgiven you. Relationships are much more resilient and stable when their backdrop is of this honest and undisguised example that Dad provided. I hope that, without his living example, we too can reach his level of relationship mastery that could prevent the unfortunate strife common to aging families.
Ah, holiness. Now I specifically remember Dad trimming his finger nails during a homily and I'd bet he would be hard-pressed to wax intelligent on the pope's latest encyclicals. That being said, among the billions of people to walk this earth, there is only one Jesus and only 12 apostles and yet a passerby eclipsed the cowardliness of the those same apostles when Jesus needed help to carry the cross. My point is we may not all be called to extreme, life-changing religious callings, but like Simon (the passerby), we are all called to be ready. Dad's honesty and integrity as a man, meant that he was ready.
So there they are--Dad's gifts. None of them were given in a vacuum, but rather in a life of struggle and hardship, joy and excitement. Let's not forget them. Let's enhance them and honor Dad through them.