Eulogy

My father was a very sincere, caring and thoughtful man – but he was also quite in touch with his inner child.  He had all kinds of goofy expressions. “It’s been real” is a favourite of mine.  “Gupe” meant thank you. “Pulling a Hank Snow” meant you were moving on and, without fail, when someone announced they were leaving he’d proclaim “Ah – but you just got here.”

He called his guitar his “Mean Six” (because it has six strings.) He was well known for playing his guitar. He got his nickname, Webb, from playing Webb Pierce songs.  A friend brought a tape of Webb Pierce a couple of weeks ago and the day before he died, Dad was trying to sing along to his signature hit, I’m in the Jailhouse Now.

Webb Pierce was a little before my time, but I remember on Sundays Dad would come home from church, pull his Mean Six out from under the couch, turn to face the corner and wail.  The acoustics were better that way.  He loved to play his Mean Six and sing. He taught me to sing Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire when I was just 3.  I was about the same age when he taught me the twist.

Dad had a genuine curiosity about life and wasn’t afraid to ask questions. He was always asking my brother and me what we “thought” about things. He woke us up at night to watch pigs being born, Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon and Pierre Trudeau’s first election win.

He took us both out at different times on his SnoBoy truck route – but that stopped when a co-worker got in an accident with his truck and his wife was hurt.  My memories of those days are hazy, but I do know that he loved driving a truck and everyone on his route, including the waitresses at his favourite truck stops, knew him by name.

On Saturday afternoons, when he wasn’t busy in the fields, he would watch wrestling on TV, and Gerry and I would climb up on each arm of the chair to watch with him.  He called it “wrassling” and he delighted in demonstrating wrassling moves on our dog, Prince.  The dog’s tongue would hang out and his paws flail uselessly while Dad would put him in a head lock or a half nelson.  Gerry and I would roll around on the porch laughing. I think that was the point.

Once, Gerry and I decided we would each build a boat.  Mine was an old door with a tilted “mast” nailed to it.  Gerry’s was a board or two nailed together.  We called our boats “Soupy Sails” and “Wacky Waves”, and they were destined to rest at the bottom of the Grand River. But we got pillows and snacks ready because we thought we’d sail away on our boats and go camping.  But first we had to wait ‘til Dad got home.  He was barely out of his truck when we ran toward him to tell him what we’d done.  He acted like it was the greatest idea in the world.  He said he wanted to phone up Gary McLaren (anchor of CTV local news in the 60s) so he could “put it on the Scan News hour!”

That’s the way Dad was.  He made you feel like you were the most brilliant person in the room.  He was interested in everything we did – driving us all over Southern Ontario for hockey games and drama. 

He was also protective.  Once, when I was a preteen – 12 going on 20 – a group of teenage boys pulled up beside me on the back road cat-calling and honking the horn. They tried to get me to get in the car with them but I wouldn’t. I was puzzled by the whole affair and later, Dad tried to explain it to me.  He came into my room and said, “Debbie, you’re a big girl now and …” He moved to the window, “You’re a big girl now…” He moved back to the doorway and started again, “Debbie, you’re a big girl now and…” And that was that.  He started to cry and walked out.  I shrugged my shoulders and went back to rearranging my collection of Bonnie Belle make up samples. I was puzzled by his behaviour but convinced that he loved me.

As a Mennonite, and a good neighbour, Dad took part in many barn raisings.  He also often traveled many times with Mennonite Disaster Services to help clean up and rebuild after tornadoes and hurricanes.  Once, after a trip to Elmira, New York, he delighted in telling us how he’d cleaned outhouses after a flood.  Of course, he cleaned out houses, but he’d found a funnier way to tell the story and he stuck to it.  He told me of another time when he was in Jamaica, building roofs that had blown away during a hurricane. He was up on a roof when he heard moaning from below. He scrambled down to see if there was a survivor that had been missed.  Instead he found a woman weeping. She was so moved that volunteers like him had come all the way from Canada to do for free what local contractors were charging an arm and a leg.

Dad was a very modern man.  His father was the first on our road to get a car that wasn’t black.  He may have been the first to get a car at all!  In 1968 or 69 a decision was made that the women at this church no longer had to wear hats or hair nets for Sunday services if they chose not to.  He meant no disrespect, but he called them “crash helmets” just to get a rise out of his mother – my grandmother Leah Horst.  So when the church decided coverings were no longer necessary, he went through the house and threw all of Mom’s “crash helmets” into the furnace.

He was an especially modern man in his attitude about women – which changed the older I got.  One day he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  It was the mid 60’s and there weren’t a lot of career women at the time.  I was about 7 or 8 years old and it was clear he expected to hear something brilliant from me. Back then, all I wanted for myself was to marry a man like him, have babies and take care of them the way my mom did.  We were sitting in his truck in the parking lot of the Co-op (which he called The Coop) and I wracked my brain trying to come up with a career that might make him happy.  Then I remembered an earlier time with my Dad in his SnoBoy truck. “I want to be a waitress!” I cried. His shoulders drooped. Clearly it wasn’t what he expected to hear.

Mom had a lot to do with his modern attitude toward women.  It was clear that he saw her as a full and equal partner in life – maybe more equal.  When Gerry and I were little he would sing the theme to “Miss America” every time she walked in the room.  He called her precious, but he put his funny slant on it, pronouncing it “PRAY-shus.” His love for her grew and grew throughout their nearly 50 years of marriage.  He really wanted to live to see that anniversary – three days from today.

When I came back to Ontario after living out west for a few years, Dad and I shared a long car ride together. I was 21-years-old and still hadn’t picked a career.  A conversation about what I wanted to do with my life morphed into his telling me how much he loved my mother.  As you can imagine from the “big girl now” incident, he wasn’t always able to articulate well with me, but on this day he had no trouble at all.  He told me that he prayed he would die before my Mom because he couldn’t live without her.

His prayer was answered.  She cared for him right up until the end. Every time he opened his eyes he scanned the room looking for her. 

Whenever she said, “I love you sweetheart” he’d say, “So much.”  When he realized he wasn’t going to make it to their 50^th wedding anniversary he asked her, “I’m going home now, aren’t I?” She held his hand and said yes.

Three days later, his family held his hand as he died.

Dad, it’s been real.

 

Willard (Webb) Lorne Horst

October 26, 1935 – December 24, 2008