Papa

My Papa, Paul Albert Turner, was 83 years old when he died this Thursday morning, March 4th. A couple weeks ago I read his memoirs, and was reminded of the incredible stories he told me as I was growing up, especially when we were on the porch of our Sinclair Island cabin. The most incredible thing about his stories was that they were not born of creativity, they were simply a retelling of his life.

Never have I known anyone with such a variety of experiences, or a memory so precise in its retelling. He went to 27 different schools before he graduated from high school, and he remembered them all. Despite the fact that he lived with multiple members of his extended family in his early childhood, he remembered his younger years with fondness, and loved all the people who raised him. He always quoted Thumper the Rabbit to us, saying, "If you can't say nothin' nice, don't say nothin' at all." This sums up the way he viewed and talked about his personal history. Rather than remember the cold nights at his grandma's house, he would lovingly tell us how she brought hot rocks to him, and put them at the foot of his bed to warm his feet.

There are so many things that I remember about my Papa, but one theme runs through them all: God's faithfulness to his children. As I look back on my short life and see the depth, richness, and weight of all that I have experienced so far, I wonder how it is possible for someone to contain it all after 83 years. The answer I find is this: He never had to carry the weight of life, either its pain or its joy, but he was sustained by a God who loved him, and had a plan for him.

I see the faithfulness of God when I see the amazing impact my Papa had on his family as a father, uncle, and grandfather, and his community as a junior high principle. I see that God put him in my life to teach me how to fish, how to swim, how drive a boat, how to filet a fish, how to use " I" and "me" in their proper places, and how to sit on a boat when the tide is wrong and the fish aren't biting, and look at the ocean, and be thankful for what I have.

There is nothing that I am more thankful for than my salvation, but I am thankful that God gave me Papa to show me, in part, what a saved life looks like, and that God is always faithful.