I Can See My Father Singing

My father, Russell Bryan Crosby, took off on his last adventure the Sunday before Thanksgiving. He and Donna, his bride of 61 years, packed the car and left without telling a soul. “I’m dying,” he told mother. “Let’s see if I can breathe better where it is hot and dry.” They left before 6 a.m. and were nearly to Fort Stockton in far West Texas before anybody knew. Mother was behind the wheel, and Dad was navigating with waves and nods.

They traveled to El Paso, admired a rare rainbow, and stayed with a man who lived in our home as a teenager in trouble. Then they headed north into the mountains on a course that we often traveled when I was a boy. They crossed the high mountain pass at Cloudcroft, N.M., ate some fresh apples from an orchard, and admired the towering peaks draped in snow. After 1,350 miles on the road, they made it back to the family Thanksgiving gathering.

My mother knew it was crazy for them to travel so far when he was so sick. But she told us all how delighted she is that they made that trip, their last fling together.

I was singing with my family around the deathbed of my father just a few days later. Mother was lying beside him holding his hand, and he was breathing but no longer responding.

I leaned over and thanked him for making me sing when I was a boy. Dad insisted that I sing with my brothers, even though I protested loudly, and he taught me how to do it. Song became such a great part of my life.

Singing together as men around the deathbed of our father was such a healing, helpful, joyful, and sorrowful experience.

Dad gathered us boys when we were preteens. He stood the four of us oldest ones in a row with hymnbooks in our hands. He taught us how to sing the harmonies. He did it patiently, persistently, until we got it, learned it, and loved it.

We sang together for ten years, my brothers and I, and it was formative and magical for each of us. We grew in our musical skills beyond Dad’s ability to help, and that was okay with him. We picked up instruments that Dad never learned to play. We wrote songs. Dad pulled us together, focused our energies, and helped us understand the power and beauty of song.

I picture Dad standing behind the pulpit, head thrown back, eyes half closed, singing about Jesus with a passion that no one could miss. His love for the Savior never waned through all those years. Right up the last, he wanted to sing and talk about Jesus.

I hear him calling us together for suppertime with a baritone voice booming through the hall: “Jesus has a table spread where the saints of God are fed. He invites his chosen people come and dine.” We joined him in his song until, through the years, it became a chorus of a hundred voices. It is one of the songs our family sang as friends passed by the coffin in their last tribute to our father.

I do remember my father preaching, of course. He towered above us as children, delivering God’s word in creative and interesting ways with vivid pictures and stories that made the text come to life. He instilled in us a love for God’s Word. We learned it by rote from the time we could talk.

I see him, Bible open in his lap, sitting on a stump in the forest with sunbeams dancing around his perch, getting his Sunday sermon ready. My father meditated deeply on the Scriptures. He always had a thought he was toying with, an intriguing notion, a perplexing puzzle or paradox. I picture Dad, choked with emotion, carefully retelling the story of his text.

I also see my father heaving heavy stones to shoulder height, building our rock house in the desert of El Paso, always accompanied by tiny people under foot.

My earliest memory is a train ride with my parents. I remember standing next to the bench seat on the train with a bag beside me. Some of my fondest memories of my childhood are the trips we took as a family. By the time I was 16 years old I had been in 27 of these United States.

We had several station wagons during my boyhood. The two I remember best are a big red Chevrolet and a smaller tan Buick. “How did so many of you travel in that station wagon?” I have been asked.

My reply: “You’d be surprised how many kids you can get in a station wagon if you stack them right.”

My second earliest memory is a snapshot from the hallway of the parsonage in El Paso. I woke up in my father’s arms as he carried me from the living room to my bed. The memory of being suspended and secure in his embrace stayed with me all these years. This memory may be the one that captures best how I understand and experience the Heavenly Father. Maybe trusting God comes easier when you know the strong arms of a loving earthly father.

My father’s life was all about Jesus—serving, exalting, and pleasing the One who went to the cross and accomplished such an amazing rescue for sinners like us. He experienced a powerful spiritual transformation when he asked Christ to save him as an 18-year-old. That experience was the emotional and spiritual centerpiece of his life. He found his personal foundation in Christ alone, and he anchored his family in Christ as well.