Father’s Day, and Common Ground at the Murder Site

It’s Father’s Day, and no one has been murdered in my family. And by family, I mean, extended family and Marnell’s family, as far as I can remember or have been told. Hundreds of people, none of them murdered.

Hence, a sense of helplessness when I think of the family of the man who was shot dead a few streets from us. I see the cameraman positioned on the sidewalk across the street. I see the bouquet of shiny red helium balloons dancing on the sidewalk in his memory. But I can’t relate to this world from personal experience. In my experience, cameras and helium balloons mean birthday parties or new babies or Valentine’s Day.

WSBT reporters encountered the woman bringing the red balloon bouquet.

She did not want to speak to us on camera, the reporter said, but said he was a good dad.

Now it’s Father’s Day, and Marnell and I both had “good dads”, probably to a degree unimaginable to the child of this murdered man.

Of course I didn’t know Marnell’s dad before I knew Marnell. But I know he drove Marnell and his mom time after time to Mayo Clinic for cancer treatments. I know he is quick to share what he has with anyone in need. I know he has a sense of humor, and in fact I nearly lost my composure the other night at Hopper’s restaurant listening to Marnell’s Dad sparring cleverly with his brother Ed (Marnell’s uncle) about, among other things, fried frog legs. I know he’s been a faithful member of the same church for many years, which is more than many people can say.

I grew up on a produce farm in the green farmland of central Wisconsin. My dad planted about 4,000 tomato plants each year. I can still smell the acidic, half-sweet smell of the tomatoes as we picked down the long rows. and feel the handle of the 5 gallon buckets filled with tomatoes biting into my hand.

Dad also had a greenhouse, where we nurtured thousands of small plants in early spring. In the early years, we wrote the names of the plants with a Sharpie on small white plastic markers. We stuck the label into the dirt so we would know which pepper plant was a jalapeno and which was a green bell.

During the summer we worked insane hours and slept in on Sunday only. Except for Dad, who often got up early even then to prepare a sermon.

During the winter we played chess and Parcheesi especially on holidays which were such lovely family times. There was the Christmas that Dad insisted on bringing home a man with no family. I thought it would ruin our day, but it ended up being fun. In the end, that man died in a nursing home and my dad was the nursing home’s family contact person and the planner of his funeral.

Much as my brothers and sisters and I complained about the hard life of produce-growers, we all dabble in it to some extent now. I’m supposing that Dad chuckles to himself every time he sees a photo of our gardening efforts.

So, I set off the other day, to let people know about planting night for our community garden. Wherever I saw a rose bush, or a bed of petunias, or a newly-planted apple tree, I stopped and asked if there were gardeners in the house. There were next to no vegetables, but someone who can plant a rose bush can plant a tomato plant, I decided.

As I made my way east, I saw the red helium balloon bouquet dancing ahead.

I should stop and knock on the door, I thought. Just to see if there’s anything we can do to help. Nothing to do with the garden, of course. I couldn’t expect such a setting to harbor anyone interested in plants.

When I got to the murder site, I squatted down by the memorial. I looked at the burned candles, now cold. The red helium balloons, still in the air, were dented with depleting pressure. A coarse wooden cross anchored them.

Then, behind the memorial, I saw them. A tomato plant. A plant label written in black marker: “Grand Bell”.

Someone had capitalized on the narrow strip of earth between sidewalk and porch and planted peppers and tomatoes. Someone had gotten them into the ground despite the persistent rains that delayed and frustrated farmers with much grander equipment and acreage. Why, the tomato plant was bushy and green and already spotted a healthful yellow flower.

A kind of shock came over me that I can’t describe. The murder had happened near a produce patch. Someone was here who loves beauty and plants, just like me. It could be the mother or close friend of the man who died. Who knows?

I tried knocking on the door of the bullet-riddled house, but either no one was home or they had quit answering the door. I saw an upstairs window open, and I remembered the scene close to my brother’s former house where a man killed his two children and himself. He left six months’ advance rent on the kitchen table for the landlord, because it’s hard to rent out a murder site, even though he took the thoughtful precaution of shooting himself on a tarp. There too, a window was left open.

Fresh air, fresh air, please come in and erase….

But here, the man had died on the sidewalk, so the window probably was not related.

I know better each Father’s Day how exceptional it was to grow up in a good home with both parents. It’s not just the absence of murders. Our dads gave us the tools to think sanely and serve faithfully in the diverse and unstable community we live in now. They taught us to know and love the Person who never changes.

Blessings like these, which Marnell and I received from our fathers, are so rare in our neighborhood they can feel like walls. But Christ can break walls, and I found common ground here at the murder site, thanks to my dad’s tomato farm.

Happy Father’s Day, especially to two very special Dads!