My dad's illness came as a bit of a shock. Dads just aren't supposed to get sick. Dads are strong. Dads take care of everyone else. Dads right the wrongs in our world. Dads can do anything. And my dad was no exception to those rules!
It's hard to say when there were any initial signs of his illness. I remember in high school he would begin to complain about his bones in the winter months at work. And when I came home from my freshman year in college for the summer and went to sit on the edge of his recliner to talk and give him a hug, he complained about the pain in his leg if I leaned on it accidentally. I mean, I'd been doing that forever! That was our common evening talk/ goodnight position. We discussed the fact that maybe he had arthritis. Grandma Zielke had it pretty bad, and it was possible. Maybe he just needed to go to a doctor and get some medicine. I even searched out an arthritis clinic not too far from Aurora. Dad could be pretty stubborn though and was in no hurry to go to a doctor.
That summer, he built me the one and only thing he ever built me. I had always dreamed that when I got married, he'd build me my home, but all I got was a bookcase. And what a bookcase it was!!! I just wanted a small bookcase that my roommate, Robyn, and I could share when we moved into the Zeta house that fall. Instead I got a 5' tall, 4 shelf bookcase made out of , SOLID Oak. I say SOLID because it was HEAVY! Anyone that ever helped me move it certainly let out a few expletives at the weight, but it was definitely sturdy and withstood the test of time. I still had it when we moved to Vernal, UT until 2002, when I left it with my sister-in-law, Amy. My poor dad, though, he had never built any furniture before. He put a piece of oak-colored paneling on the back and then thought he had gotten stain that would match, but the stain turned the wood black, so he had to paint the paneling. It wasn't the most attractive piece of furniture. And, as I said, it was a beast to move. But, it was made with love. And it was made just for me. And it was the last thing he made. He delivered it to me at the Zeta house the week after I moved in and it was the last time my dad came to campus.
Shortly after that, my dad began taking medicine for his "arthritis," but when it didn't seem to be helping, he went to that arthritis clinic and had to give them his current medications. When he was told that that wasn't arthritis medicine, but was in fact cancer medication, we were in shock.
It turns out that a good friend of my father's, Ralph Weber, had referred my father to a doctor. That doctor was a friend of Ralph's also and Ralph had told him that if he found out that my dad had cancer, he couldn't tell him. It seems that when my mother was so ill with her cancer, my father had told Ralph that if he ever got cancer, he would just kill himself; that he couldn't bear to go through everything my mother had gone through. So, when the doctor determined that my father did in fact have bone cancer, he gave him some medication and told him it was for arthritis. There wasn't much to be done for bone cancer anyway and if my dad's threat to kill himself if he ever got cancer was real, Ralph had given us all some extra time.
I never saw my dad at home again. When I went home for Thanksgiving, it was to visit him in the hospital in Chicago. When I went home at Christmas, it was to see him in the hospital and when I went home in January for my niece's funeral, I saw him at his fiancee, Ethel's home. He was in a wheelchair at that time and too ill to make the trip for Kirsten's funeral. I went home again one more time in March and saw him in the hospital before he died on March 31st, 1975.
He was the fifth child of eight born to Reinhold Zielke; the second child and only son born to Reinhold's second wife, Martha. He was the first of the eight to die, just two years after his own mother died. My brothers and I were the first "orphans" of all the cousins.
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| My dad with his older sister, Helen and younger sister, Grace. |
After we put the funeral behind us, my brothers and I had to attend a reading of his will. After hospital and funeral expenses were paid, all that my father had was to be divided four ways between my brothers and me and my dad's fiancee. The reading of the will brought three things to my realization. Number one, that I was an orphan. (My brothers didn't seem like orphans, since they both had families of their own by then.) Number two, that I was a "spinster!" Yep. By legal definition, at the ripe old age of twenty and unmarried, in legal lingo, I was indeed defined as a spinster. That certainly made me feel good about myself, I tell ya. I was glad I kinda had a boyfriend at least!
Number three, that my dad really, truly did care about Ethel and she was a good woman. She had taken care of him through thick and thin and mourned his death every bit as much as we did. But I had been mean to Ethel. You see, she was too much like my mom. She was short, like my mom. She had short, brown hair, like my mom. She had a fabulous sense of humor, like my mom. She was overweight, like my mom. Her kids meant everything to her, like my mom. And she loved my dad, like my mom. Unfortunately, in my teenage mind, my dad was trying to replace my mom, to forget about her. What I realized much too much later was that he WAS trying to replace my mom, but he had apparently loved her so much, that he wanted someone like her. I wish he could have told me that, instead of me having to take psychology courses and grow up to figure it out myself. I surely could have made life much easier and happier for them if I had understood as a teenager.
I mentioned earlier that dads aren't supposed to get sick. That they're supposed to be strong and fix everything. When I was a kid, there was a great TV show called "The Donna Reed Show." On one of the episodes, the son, Jeff (Paul Peterson), sang a song about his dad. Although, I can't say that I always hoped that some day my own son would say "My dad...," the rest of it applies to how I felt about my dad and still do, for that matter:
Although I wasn't as involved in my father's illness as I had been with my mother's and thankfully, for his sake and ours, it didn't last two years, it was still a very difficult time and it began to condition me for the future losses in my life. I learned that if I was removed from someone or a situation, it was easier to block it out and pretend it didn't exist. I just didn't need to think about it. Not necessarily the best way to deal with it, but it did enable me to become self-reliant; to learn to depend on myself and create my own way in the world.
So, on this anniversary of my father's death, I'm all the more grateful for the atoning sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who has made it possible for each of us to return to live with our loving Father in Heaven and be assured of the opportunity to come forth in the morning of the first resurrection and to be with our loved ones through the eternities. As I wish you a Happy Easter, I invite you to watch this seven minute video of the final week of Christ's life: He is Risen!
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