Memorable Dads Are with Us Always

By Cindy LaFerle

Eleven years ago, when my father died, one of the first things my mother and I did was hire a bagpiper to play at his funeral.

He was the son of Scottish immigrants who came to Detroit from the Orkney Islands in the 1920s. Always proud of his Celtic heritage, my dad had been raised to appreciate everything about the old country—food, folklore, history. Naturally, he loved the highland bagpipes, and we’d all have to stop whatever we were doing to listen to the pipe-and-drum corps whenever they marched in parades or on television.

The piper we hired for Dad’s funeral played a few solemn airs before the interment. I’d requested “Amazing Grace” and “Scotland the Brave”—not very original, I know, but my father loved those pieces, and we all felt better knowing they were the last pieces played before his burial. It was foggy and rainy that morning—very British—and every somber note from those pipes seemed to linger in the humid July air.

Weeks after the funeral, our whole family drifted through our own mental fog. We kept busy driving to banks and government offices to revise my parents’ accounts and personal papers. We opened Dad’s closet and somehow managed the task of sorting through his suits and ties.

Trying to maintain a normal family routine, Mom and I took Nate, then six, to a local park for a picnic supper. We’d barely unpacked the potato salad when we heard the unmistakable drone of a bagpipe a few feet behind our picnic table. To say we were stunned would be an understatement. And when the piper began playing “Scotland the Brave,” well, suffice to say that the tears rolled nonstop, nudging us out of our numbness and into the next stage of healing.

The piper wasn’t a phantom, of course, but a very real student who’d decided to practice in the park at the same time we’d chosen to have a summer picnic. But somehow I felt certain that the impromptu recital was a signal from my dad—a mystical “thank you” for the proper sendoff we’d given him a few days earlier.

The piper episode came to mind again this spring, after a beautiful memorial service for the father of a close friend, John.

John’s dad was a Navy captain, and the whole family was proud of his military career. John wrote a heartfelt eulogy that celebrated his father’s life as a patriotic American and a dedicated father. But even more remarkable, to me, was the fact that John was able to stand at the pulpit and read what he’d written. It was a very brave thing to do, and I have no doubt “The Captain” was saluting John from his new tour of duty in heaven.

Not long after his dad died, John took a business trip to Chicago, where he happened to catch a glimpse of a Navy captain on a street corner.

A longtime newspaper editor, John has never been particularly sentimental or superstitious. But he told me he found comfort in the sight of the familiar Navy uniform and believed it was a sign. He stopped to chat with the captain, briefly telling him about his father’s passing. Returning home that evening, he felt more at peace.

As John reminded me later, you don’t often spot a Navy captain standing casually on a street corner. Nor is it common to hear a bagpiper droning a few tunes in a suburban park.

No matter how old you are, it’s never easy to lose your dad. You keep looking for traces of him wherever you go.

Cindy LaFerle’s award-winning personal essays are published in Writing Home, a holistic celebration of parenthood and domestic arts. The book is available in bookstores and on amazon.com. Visit Cindy’s Home Office at www.laferle.com