Driving to the Mississippi to scatter the ashes of Jack Clayton Trimble, we turn off the main drive onto a side-road where we encounter this sign: The Road Ends in Water.  This is the eulogy I delivered at my father’s funeral.

Jack Trimble
(1915 –2002)We always said it would take an act of God to get Jack Trimble into church and so, of course, here we are.

Jack started to pull up stakes from his body in 1997 and completed the move on Pearl Harbor Day.  I want to rewind back to when Jack was Jack, Daddio was Daddio.  That’s who we will remember.

There is a complex narrative here.  I freely admit some of this is supposition, as Jack handed out words like currency, but Jack loved his five children. While Jack loved his children he probably hated having them. Although he took great pride in them, particularly as adults, his paternal instincts were a tad “dicey.”  I know he truly loved Nancy and they were married for fifty-five years.

But this is a complex narrative. Pain begets pain. I wouldn’t wish his upbringing on anyone. I mean no one. I have read his descriptions of his childhood and it is a cold, bleak landscape. He is trying to avoid the penalties of being the son of a small-minded preacher in a small-minded Iowa town. He has to delay college to help out at his brother’s farm. He hates it all. He sometimes gets to disappear in summer and hunt rabbits with a bow and arrow in the countryside of 1931. He goes impromptu camping with three friends who sing for their supper.  They do well.

I am fifty years old and I have never heard Jack Trimble sing.

Jack escapes to Chicago and lives with his older sister, Pat, and finds work as a writer for the Evanston Review.

World War Two: he enlists and is a nose gunner in a B-24 Liberator Bomber. First stationed in North Africa, he then flies missions over the Ploesti Oil Fields. One day he becomes ill and can’t fly the mission. That day his plane is shot down with the entire crew lost. Basically, I am on the planet today because of diarrhea.

As for everyone who goes to war, that experience remains forever both a peak moment and a huge liability as they try to reassemble their lives. Years after he was back, Jack opens the refrigerator, smells lamb, a dish he ate frequently in the war, and faints deadaway on the kitchen floor.

So here’s the crux: Jack Trimble was in pain; Centerville pain, Iowa farm pain, Grandpa Everett pain, Ploesti pain, 5 kids and insufficient funds pain, National Safety Council Pain, Early Times pain. He was a pain conduit. This is a complex narrative.

Jack Trimble loved the woods and fields of his childhood. He loved the American Indian ideal. That was one of the few things that made sense to him. In high school he took to wearing an Indian feather in his hair. This was in 1930. He loved and excelled in archery. He grew to love golf as much for the outdoors as for the game. He learned woodworking and became a master at it.

Pain begets pain. Pain begets humor. Jack’s true gift to his children was humor. He was very understated but very funny. He could make us laugh and we learned to make him laugh. Pain begets pain and pain begets humor. So be it. But all five kids are funny. They can make people laugh. But more importantly they can make each other laugh. That is inordinately important to me.

It does dawn on me that as a family we try to make each other laugh as an expression of love. We make each other laugh because we love each other. And that expression was learned from Jack.

So here is a simple narrative:

A dog is barking.

Jack is tracking rabbits with his bow and arrow. It is a beautiful Iowa day in spring. It is warm. There are fields and woods for as far as the eye can see. It feels like 1931 but it is really tomorrow.

He sees a rabbit ahead, begins to run, and feels like he can run forever.