Remembering My Father: Fernandis R. Graber

Three years ago this month I found myself standing in a little Amish cemetery near La Grange, Indiana and watching while my father was being lowered into his grave and then covered with the earth to which we all shall return one day. It was a day of mixed feelings for me as well as for my brothers and sisters.

Dad had been born in Middlebury, Indiana 78 years earlier in the early years of the Great Depression. He had married my mother in 1951. Then he, along with mother, served in Terre Haute, Indiana in the IW or Conscientious objector program. Six and a half years after their marriage I was born and was the only child till more than ten years later when my sister arrived in 1968. Three and a half years before she was born we had left both dad and my childhood home of Middlebury, Indiana and moved to Missouri. Mother had suffered with cancer before my sister was born and was in remission but sometime after that it all came back and she passed away in 1969 just days after my sister's first birthday. Dad married again in 1970 to Suvilla Stutzman who stepped right in and took on the job of raising us and being the help meet she was meant to be. Sister Ruby was born in 1971 and Vernon joined us in 1972. In 1973 we moved back to Michigan (and I say back, because for Dad it was going back closer to his childhood home) where LeAnna was born. Four years of living in Michigan and we moved to La Grange County, Indiana where Irene and Henry were born. This place on 400W in La Grange County became the old home place for Dad's family, even though I left home and married later that year. Dad eventually built a Doddy house there and Henry moved into the big house when he was married to Leah and they took over the farm from Dad. Here in LaGrange County, less than 15 miles from his childhood home, Dad lived out his years.

So there I was, with most of my family around me, on a cold day in February 2007, watching as the era of Dad's life here on earth came to a close. I remembered standing at another grave hundreds of miles away on a hot August day in 1969 when my mother was being lowered into the grave. I remembered so many things that had happened over the years in my life that had involved Dad. I remembered a year earlier when my Uncle Ora had passed on and Dad was there, on a wheelchair, to witness the events. It was a bitter cold day in Bronson, Michigan where that funeral was held in someone's workshop and Dad was very cold. I was able to spend several hours with him and Mom the next morning before heading back to Detroit in my rental car and flying back home to Texas, never seeing him alive again. But it was a very good visit. We talked about things from over the years and dad recounted memories he had. We talked like we hadn't talked in years. I remembered when we had left the Amish in Montana years earlier. Dad had protested in his way. He didn't like it. But eventually he accepted it. Accepted it to a point. And there, that morning, around the kitchen table in Dad's house, we for the first time in years, had a wonderful time together. Right now I can't remember much that we talked about. But that doesn't matter right now.

But standing there beside his grave that morning, I was flooded with a flood of memories. Memories that are still coming back today. His life was over, but we are still living and still bringing to memory things he did and said over the years. The good times we had. The not so good times that we had gone through. But in my heart I had forgiven him for things that had happened that I didn't like. Things that had affected me in ways that I didn't like. Things in which I thought he was wrong. Was he wrong? No, usually not, but stubborn first born sons often think like that. But now I was filled with a peace. We had made our peace a year earlier. And I am very thankful to this day for those few hours we spent around the kitchen table in his house that morning.