Following is not a laundry list of who Rick DeVane was and what he did. To reminisce in this medium is too painful yet. I am not able to do it. I have tried and failed miserably many times. Instead, I have to get past my own pain...so the following may seem self-centered, but it is part of a process to be able to share Dad with everyone else. I am not ready to share my memories quite yet.

One year ago today my father’s body died. One year ago, my father’s soul was cradled in perfect love, knowledge and peace. The same day last year, my heart broke in a way I did not expect, erupting in sorrow and guilt and self-examination. I did not receive the gift of heaven’s kiss, full of insight and jubilation. Instead, I questioned, grieved, gnashed my teeth at humanity and my place in it.

I was motivated from a raw internal place that had been exposed to change parts of my life into what I had yearned to see in my world. I found more of my father in me than I knew, along with more of my own spirit beyond the shroud of static so often traded for idealism.

The time first swirled in a dream, all of it surreal. So often over the past months I have had to convince myself he was gone and then I would reel back from the force of the persuasion - the reality stark and naked was like a slap in the dark. Through the months, I have mourned my father, but also looked around at my responsibility to this life, my child, my truth. I have found so much through losing my father, that I feel guilty over the selfish introspection.

I still feel the pain, the questions, and the loss. Nevertheless, at the end of this journey, I know I will be the one who was lost and then found, through the grace of my father. He has given me a gift in his death he could not have articulated in life. I feel his presence and his wisdom, his love and his acceptance.

I will take his ashes home to his birthplace soon, but that is for me, my closure, and my peace. In fact, Dad has been guiding me through my grief and I am grateful for the company.
 
I have come to this day; more open, more real, more my father’s daughter, more of a member of my human family, and missing my dad more today than the day he died. Time may heal wounds, but it also intensifies the finality and the loss of our beloved. Today is bittersweet for me. Without my father, I would not have been born, without his death; I would not have been awoken. The connection my father reminded me of; the one for which to search and to find and to offer, is the connection as humans that makes it possible to love, possible to have faith.

I KNOW there is a heaven and my father is in it. I know because I believe, and I believe because of my love, which is part of what makes heaven possible - that we know it exists at all. Dad has new, jubilant life, and I know because it is given light by the love of us who will miss him.

July 12, 2007 my father went to heaven. July 12, 2008, I believe.



Dad's Eulogy Notes from 2007
"I have been obsessing on what I would say about Dad today. How could I possibly say enough about him in a few minutes that could reflect on his whole life? What would I forget to say? Whose memories would I leave out? Do I give a biography? And then I realized that everyone here has their own memories, their own moments, that are precious and most meaningful to them.

All I can do is to share what it was like to be Rick’s daughter. My dad never seemed to treat me like a child. He taught me algebra when I was 6, Frog plus a Frog is 2 frogs. But a Frog times a Frog equals Frog squared. He was never afraid to let me practice cooking. We would make my favorite homemade concoction, “potatoes beans and things”, with tortillas and salsa from scratch. It would take so long we wouldn’t eat until 10:00. He never cared. He taught me how to hold a hammer to get the most out of every swing and how to read a level. He shared his favorite records with me and Demian while when we were younger, letting us play hockey in his living room with real hockey sticks using rolled up socks as the puck and his end tables as goals.

When we were older, we would listen while he taught us how NOT to get your left bower taken in Euchre. Dad wanted to be a disciplinarian type of father. When we were in trouble, he would ask us, “When was the last time you had a whipping?” Of course, I could never remember because he never did it. The only time he ever tried, I squirmed so much a loose baby tooth fell out. Dad was so traumatized that he scooped the little tooth up and wrapped it in foil for me to leave for the tooth fairy. He had such a tender heart.

I will always remember Dad walking fast. He had a swiftness and skill to every move… in the kitchen, working, when he cleaned and changed an album. Dad called himself just an old hillbilly, but he had a dignity and class beyond appearances. He always stood up straight, he was polite, opened doors for EVERYONE, used sir and ma’am without fail and used impeccable manners. Dad couldn’t dance, but he had an amazing Grace.

He also had an ornery streak. Dad loved shattering impressions, and at the same time was the same man his entire life. He always did things the Rick DeVane way. As I got older, Dad seemed to always have a friend in need… that spent more time with him than I got to. But, those lives were changed by my father, and at times they did need him more than me. And Dad needed them, his life defined and enriched by each and every person he called friend.

To all of his friends, thank you so very much for loving him in your own unique way. And they would all find out what I already knew, that he was insanely intelligent, beautifully soulful and every once in a while, downright silly. And I would find out that what I had was far greater; I had part of him living in me.

I have the privilege of sharing a stubborn refusal to ask for help, an innate love for Emmylou Harris, and an equally innate bad voice with which to sing along. I have the same exigency for proper English and vocabulary…. With the occasional down-home ease mixed in. And I received his greatest gift; I was able to see how he lit up when he saw himself in me. And now, I am comforted by the memories of his laughter when I amused him and he would say, Turtles, you are just like your old man.  Today I feel more like my father’s daughter than ever before.

I have to stop grieving for him, and begin living with him only in my heart, but securely there, with no doubts and no waiting for him to screen the call. I will never get to watch my father watch my son grow up, but he gets a front row seat anytime he wants one. And for Dad, I thank God now that his pain is over. It is ours that is beginning. Because he did not die alone, God was with him, holding him, loving him, and when he passed, he took a part of me home with him."