Donald Dale Miller

Dad was born in Akron, Colorado on October 12, 1926. He was the second of four sons. In his early years, his family moved from Colorado to Battle Creek, Michigan, and then again to Shabbona, Illinois, where he lived the rest of his childhood. As a child, he developed a love of nature and reflection, during long walks to and from country school in the sun, rain and snow; exploring the country wildlife and at times turning them into pets; and preparing the family garden each spring to grow vegetables that would support the family throughout the year. For entertainment, Dad joined in on square dances at a neighbor’s home, with music on the fiddle and someone calling out the routines.

Just after graduating from high school in 1944, Dad went into the military as part of the WWII draft, enlisting in the Army Air Force, and training at a camp that was close to Chicago. He loved planes, and memorized all the planes of WWII. During his free time, he would go dancing. After he was discharged, he studied electronics, and then left Chicago to travel to California in route to Alaska, stopping in north Long Beach to visit his brother who had moved there.

In Long Beach, he met and fell in love with our Mom, Nancy Taylor, whom he married on May 13, 1950. Over sixty-three years, Dad and Mom had six children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. For most of that time, Dad worked at Beckman Instruments in Electronics, developing and testing medical equipment. He had a great devotion to daily prayer and Holy Communion, which along with his commitment to his family, became the foundation of his life. Through the years, Dad and Mom instilled in all of us, their love of nature through yearly vacations in the mountains: we hiked, fished, sang songs by the campfire, and learned about the many flowers and birds. Dad’s desire to show kindness towards the people around him, and his deep faith and love for his family were gifts to us all.

Eulogy for Dad

February 22, 2014

With Love, Mary and Jay

My name is Mary, and I am the youngest child from Don and Nancy Miller’s immediate family. This is my husband, Jay. It occurred to us last weekend, that we both had a very similar in-depth conversation with Dad at important points in his life. I had that conversation on Dad’s 70th birthday, and Jay had it one week before Dad closed his eyes, stopped eating, drinking and talking, and began 13 days of waiting for someone from heaven to greet him into his new life after death. We know this because during that waiting period, he said twice, “I am waiting for someone to come and get me.”

Jay and I would like to share what Dad said during each of our conversations. Both conversations started with one simple question: “Dad, What is important for us to remember?”

At the time of my conversation with Dad at 70 years old, he had lived much longer than he had expected. When he had his heart attack just five years earlier, he explained to us that he was ready to die. He thought that he had finished his job as a father, and knew that Mom would be fine with our collective support. He did not see the purpose in continuing on. But he did. It wasn’t his time to go, and he had to find a new source of purpose. So on his 70th birthday, when I asked, “Dad, what is important for us to remember?” he had these six points which I wrote down on this piece of paper 17 years ago:

1. Don’t go sour, or you risk losing your spirit. Find ways to move through life’s difficulties without carrying them. One example of how Dad applied this value to his life, was that he made it a practice to reach out to people he had conflicts with to build common ground, to apologize, to share a story. He never held a grudge, and he started fresh with people every day, despite what challenges occurred the day before.

2. Find your source of inspiration. Dad had a deep spiritual life and connection with nature that he used as his anchor in life. He woke up at 4:30 a.m. each day before work to eat breakfast in prayer, in the dark, in front of a lit candle. He made it a habit to do something he enjoyed before work each day, which was generally exercise, going to church, and fishing. He went to the mountains on overnight trips by himself to reflect, he wrote in his journals, and went on silent retreats. He searched for meaning and inspiration on a daily basis.

3. Know who your heroes are, and be like them, even if in very small ways. Dad thought about how to be Christ-like, and followed the Good Samaritan rule. He was quick to apologize and reconnect with people he had conflicts with. Despite having a full house with six kids, and a very limited budget, Dad and Mom accepted friends of anyone in our family to live in our home when they needed a place to live. He fixed other people’s cars and stopped to help when a stranger’s car had a break-down on the freeway.

4. Know your constitution, meaning, have wisdom to feel your unique life boundaries and be mindful of when difficulties might be too much for you. Dad had a very full life with Mom raising six children, and he believed in time for reflection and routines to manage the complexity. He cut back on his own goals and chose to not take promotions at work in order to focus on our family. He spent time in the garden every day to connect with nature.

5. Rely on humor to make things lighter. Learn to laugh easily. Dad had silliness about him and could laugh at himself. Some of my favorite stories that he would tell, are of him finding humor in the situations that would occur due to his declining condition. Instead of getting angry about losing his physical and mental abilities over the years, he prayed to accept them and eventually could find humor in them. For example, he had really bad vertigo, and there were times he would end up on the ground, not really knowing how he got there. There was one time years ago, when he his vertigo caused him to fall before he finished going to the bathroom. He thought this was so funny, and said that when he landed on the floor, he prayed, ‘Not now, Lord – of all the places I might die, this would not be my first choice!’

6. In the sixth and last point Dad communicated to me, he said, “Find your unique contribution.” Although he was still looking for his at 70 years old, he thought the search was important.

JAY SPEAKS

With his permission, I interviewed Don Miller on Christmas Day, 2013, less than 60 days ago. I recorded his answers on this high definition camera and I’m editing the raw film for those who’d like to see it later. I asked him about the things that he thought were important in his life, and these were some of his answers.

The first thing he mentioned was family vacations, fly fishing, Minaret falls, and that he knew exactly where all the fish were. I asked him how old he was when he first started fishing and he said that he began when he was nine years old. He and Marvin would walk three miles to the stream, catch the fish, then walk three miles back and place the fish in the water trough that the horses drank out of.

Then he talked about his children:

Karen – “Always a leader among young people. Always musical; such a talent at music. She could memorize music so fast you couldn’t believe it. She is such a special person.”

Kathy – “Kathy has always been very generous. She always has a smile on her face. She is comfortable with silence. She can come over here and talk and we don’t have to fill every moment with conversation. He also said that Dennis has a special spirit; he doesn’t have to talk for it to show.”

Don Jr. – “Don almost makes me cry every time I think about him. He’s so gentle and so kind, so giving, so generous. He very seldom has anything bad to say about anybody. I like to listen to him and talk to him.”

David – “David’s star is his special love of nature. He is the smoothest casting person I ever saw (referring to fishing). He’s always talking about going back off the trail to fish, but I don’t think he’s ever caught a single fish yet.”

Steve – “I’m wishing for Steve to have the happiest life ever. I can see something in him now that I haven’t seen for years and years and years, and that is a happy soul, a happy face and pleased with Helena. Steve is a person that doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”

Mary – “Mary is one of the most loving persons I’ve ever known. She never changes, she’s always the same. You have to cry thinking that someone has been born into our family with that type of a spirit. Always loving and doing all she could to do her part in the world. She takes care of all of our finances so that I don’t have to worry about a thing.”

Don also said that “I have a lot to look back on and a lot to look forward to also. I like the life that I’ve lived and I like the life I’m going to live. I’m really looking forward to the next world. I love you all so very much…every one of you. And I just want to say to those who are coming, grandchildren and great grandchildren, that I love you all, even though I haven’t met you.”

Don and Nancy Miller raised six compassionate individuals who have made a significant contribution to this world.

He lived a long life and was blessed.

MARY SPEAKS

At 70 years old, Dad’s advice to me was about how to have a good journey through life. His advice was about how to make life meaningful and how to uplift others.

At 87 years old, Dad’s love for his family was all that mattered to him. He had discovered his unique contribution, and it was the family that he and Mom created. He was still a Good Samaritan, despite the lack of use of his physical body. He said “Thank you, Beautiful” when Sally and Berlinda, his care providers, would help him. He expressed his gratitude to each of us many times, and told us how important we were to him. He told me that all that mattered to him was to express how special each of us was to him, and as he phrased it, “Getting his relationships right”.

Dad learned through his after-heart attack years, how much we loved him, and it filled him with inspiration, gratitude and peace. Each time I visited him over the past six months, I would ask the same two questions, “Dad, are you at peace?” and “Do you feel loved?”, and he always said, “Yes, very much so.” Last October, on his birthday, I asked him, “Looking back at your life, could you tell me about your favorite birthday?” He quickly responded, “Yes. It’s this one, because you are all here.” Despite being unable to walk, and being very weak, he still thought his very last birthday was his favorite, because we were all present to celebrate it with him. He felt our love. And in December, one day when I sat beside his bed, he explained to me how Mom had come to sit with him in the middle of the night to keep him company, and to hold his hand through the bed rails of the hospital bed. In telling me this story, Dad looked at me with a sense of deep, deep appreciation, and he said, “Mary, after all these years, your mom still loves me.”

Dad died at home, surrounded by his family, filled with love and gratitude, and truly joyful about what was to come.

A Gospel reflection in honor of the life of Don Miller by Karen Miller February 22, 2014

Jn. 14:17-24

The Gospels are not simply stories about the past, but a window into the larger realities of life with God. As I reflect on the days after my father’s death, and the impact his departure has had, I have found this Gospel to be that kind of window.

I am reading C.S. Lewis’s book “A Grief Observed. He says “No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. It feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says, or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting.” This mirrors, my own experience of grief. But it made no logical sense to me. Dad was a good man, loved God, and had a blessed life. He was sick for a long time, and it was his time to depart us. He said everything he needed to say to everyone, mostly that he loved us. In the end, that was all there was. He could say as Jesus does, “Father the hour has come. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.” He was ready. Why, given all this, is death so disruptive in such seemingly unrelated ways?

In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the amazing actions of Jesus, raising the dead, healing the sick, are called miracles. A miracle is something that happens outside of time and nature- not something we expect to see on a daily basis. But in the gospel of John, from which our gospel today is taken, the amazing actions of Jesus are called SIGN. His words and actions point to God’s presence in everything. Healing the sick, preaching to the poor, interacting with those whom his society called outcast, all spoke of the way God acts in human life. For that reason, the first half of John is called “the book of signs”. A sign is a common action, that points to something else greater, unseen but no less real. This gospel asks us to see and believe that each action we take is a sign of something more, unseen but no less real. The way we love and fight, our friendships, our attitude about strangers, and the way we respond to lost ones who come to us, can reveal God’s presence in the common activities of life.

What I have come to, is that my father’s life, was not a book of miracles, a life of extraordinary and unexpected events, but like the life of Jesus in the Gospel of John, was a book of signs. His values, attitudes, what he taught us, his faults, frailties and difficulties, the holidays and vacations, the ordinary days, the heroic service he called out of his sons and daughters as they struggled to care for him and afford him dignity in the most undignified of circumstances, and maybe especially, the way he walked with mom at his side until the last moment, to his death, were revelatory. The events of his deeply normal life, reveal what it means to be a person who is connected to God, and connected to us, both in the good times and the difficult. His life held space. His life pointed to something beyond him. This is important, not just in the way we remember him, but because he reminds us that this SIGN quality of his life, is true of each one of us.

In this Gospel, Jesus is telling his disciples that he will leave them soon. His book of signs has reached its final chapter. He is doing what Dad spent the final six months of his life doing- passing on who he was so it could be continued by others. These are the words of someone who knows what his life was about, has done what he came to do, is comforting those he will leave, and challenging them to carry on what he started. And most importantly, he tells them that he loves them. This is a kind of road map for life, and one that I think my father followed as best he could.

So, what of the strangeness of grief. Losing him, losing in a sense, his “book of signs” is like a hole ripped in a tapestry, the tapestry needing to reshape itself to fill in the space, to repair the picture it once bore. The fabric of life has changed for us. We no longer fit together in the usual way because his part of the tapestry is gone, and so our lives, our roles in family, at work, with friends are shape-shifting. This is not rational, but organic, revealing our union with him that has been disrupted, but also, a mirror of what we are to each other. It is because his story was interwoven with ours. His life was our life. Now that he is gone, we struggle to take up his book of signs ourselves, and that will take a while to do.

I am more convinced now than ever, of the truth of what Jesus says in this gospel- that we are one with each other and with God. Separation is an illusion. We are part of each other. I believe it in in my own grief observed, my life permanently altered. I must relearn my role in the world, just as everyone whose life was touched by Don Miller, must relearn theirs. This is at once deeply disruptive and immanently comforting; disruptive because we don’t know quite who we are yet, comforting because in his departure, he has revealed that we are never alone.

The words of Jesus describe why we feel so disoriented when someone departs. He says “I pray for those who will believe in me through them, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I gave them what you gave me, so they may be brought to compete unity”. The disruption we feel when someone we love leaves us, is a visceral experience of the fact that we were in fact, one with them, that we shared one book of signs with them. The truth left to us by my father, is the same truth left by Jesus. We are one. Our lives touch each other. It matters what we do. It matters how we live in ways we cannot know. Each choice we make has a ripple effect because we are one.

I am grateful that those I call family, have responded to loss by drawing closer together. Let the gospel lesson and the space left by this man inspire us to live in awareness that we are one.

FIRST READING DON MILLER JR.

Ecc. 3:1-8, 11-12

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2 a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3 a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

6 a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7 a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8 a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.

THE WORD OF THE LORD

SECOND READING NOAH ARROYO

1Cor. 13: 1-13

If I speak in the tongues, either human or angelic, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails.

But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.

12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 In the end, only these three remain: faith, hope and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

THE WORD OF THE LORD

GOSPEL: Jn. 14:17-24 FR. WILL O’CONNOR

Jesus looked toward heaven and prayed:

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. 2 For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. 3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4 I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

6 “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. 8 For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them.

20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

The Gospel of the Lord

Letter to Don from Nancy

Dearest Don,

Thank you for the 62 years of love as we worked and prayed together to create and develop our beautiful family. How proud we are for each son and daughter and their families. We talked many times about our gratefulness to God for guiding us through the years.

God has called you to Himself to a place more beautiful than we can imagine. I am grateful for the days and nights I have been able to sit by your side, holding your hand and you holding mine. Treasured, wordless moments, I will hold in my heart always.

There is emptiness here when I am alone and when the family is gathered together.

Only God and you can fill that place…

Until I join you, my love

-Your Nancy-

This poem was on the last birthday card Nancy gave to Don

Love is Togetherness Through Time

We have come to a remarkable place

of deep trust and knowledge of each other.

I can hear all kinds of meaning

in the tone of your voice,

and you can tell what kind of day I’ve had

just by seeing my face

We can talk without so many words,

laugh at things no one else can understand,

and share our worries with the comfort

only time can bring to a relationship.

And here,

in this place, the magic still happens,

and the spaces in my life are filled.

For You Are

Simply

Everything To Me