He Never Stopped Being a Father

“Lord, why didn’t you take me in his stead?”

Gerald Mounce prayed those words after my father died suddenly at sixty-five. I will never forget them. I heard a father’s grief in that prayer, and a depth of love that is difficult to put into words.

Decades before my wife, Megan, and I ever knew each other, Gerald had been a spiritual father to my dad. He had given him guidance and care when he needed someone to stand in that place. Long before I became part of Gerald’s family, he had already become part of mine.

When I first started dating Megan, I could not have imagined everything that relationship would bring into my life. I would gain a father figure in a man who had already been one to my father. The grandfather who had helped raise the woman I loved had also helped care for the man who raised me.

I look back on that now and see the care of God in connections I could never have arranged. We move through life understanding so little of what our relationships will eventually mean. Sometimes it is only years later that we begin to recognize how much we have been given.

Gerald was one of those gifts.

He was a veteran who loved his country, a father who loved his family, and a grandfather and great-grandfather whose devotion kept reaching into another generation. Through nearly 89 years of life, he gave the people around him an example of what it means to accept responsibility with faith and love.

Courtesy of the Rucker family.

Courtesy of the Rucker family.

People who were not his children or grandchildren often called him Grandaddy. That name had grown beyond a family title. To me, it expressed something about the man himself: people recognized in him the care and steadiness of someone they could regard as family.

It is a beautiful thing to live in such a way that people find a place for you in their hearts usually reserved for their own.

God came first in Gerald’s life, and his family followed. You could see those priorities in what he gave his time to and in the people he continued to care for when caring required something of him.

I was his grandson by marriage, but he became much more of a father figure to me. Much of my respect for him came from watching how he loved Megan. He cared for her as his own daughter and took that responsibility seriously.

When his son struggled to be the father his children needed, Gerald stepped in to help raise his grandchildren. He gave them his time, his guidance, and the steady care of a father.

And he continued loving his son.

That matters to me. From what I witnessed, Gerald did not use the help he gave as a reason to make his son look small. He could recognize what the children needed and answer that need while still caring about their father’s dignity.

He was fathering both generations.

There is a maturity in that kind of love that I understand more deeply as I grow older. It takes patience to help someone through a struggle without allowing the struggle to become the only thing you see in them. It takes humility to carry a responsibility without using it to claim superiority over the person who needed your help.

Gerald showed me how to step into a gap respectfully. He showed me that a family’s pain calls for people willing to help carry it, and that the way we help matters as much as our willingness to do so.

He helped raise the woman I love. His care for her became a blessing to the marriage and family we would build together.

I cannot measure what that has meant to my life.

Some of what we receive from a good man comes to us through the people he loved before we knew them. We benefit from his patience, his sacrifices, and his willingness to remain present. Years later, we find ourselves living with the good that grew from decisions he made long ago.

Gerald’s influence reached me through my father and through my wife. It also reached me directly, through the example he gave me of the man I want to become.

Courtesy of the Rucker family.

Courtesy of the Rucker family.

He was not perfect. He had shortcomings, as we all do. But he prayed daily and kept striving to become more like Christ. He thought deeply about the things of God and His Kingdom, and he cared about seeing and loving people as Christ would.

His convictions remained strong through the end of his life. He understood that loving someone did not require them to think exactly as he did. He also understood that love did not mean affirming sin or pretending every choice was right.

He could hold to what he believed while continuing to care about the person in front of him. His patience gave weight to his convictions. His compassion made it possible for people to experience the love behind them.

Sturdy is the word I keep returning to.

He was slow to anger, thoughtful, and dependable in the way he loved. I am not sure I have ever known another man quite like him. I hope I will. I also pray that I can give my family even a measure of the steadiness he gave ours.

It is hard to lose someone you have come to think of as so steady. You begin to understand how much strength you drew from simply knowing he was there. His example will continue to teach me, but I will miss the man who gave it.

Gerald’s life has made me think deeply about what we believe fatherhood is supposed to become as we grow older.

Our children’s needs change. There are years when we carry them, feed them, and make nearly every decision for them. Then come years when loving them requires more listening, more patience, and the wisdom to know when to speak and when to give them room.

Eventually, they may have children of their own. We become the older generation. We have experience to offer, prayers to pray, and opportunities to give a younger family the support we once needed ourselves.

The work changes. The calling continues.

Courtesy of the Rucker family.

Courtesy of the Rucker family.

Not every grandparent will be called upon to help raise a grandchild. Gerald was needed in that way, and he stepped forward. His example leaves me with a question about my own life: when my family needs more of me than I expected to give, will I remain willing?

When I hear the words, “I raised my children. I did my time,” I think about everything our family would have missed if Gerald had decided his work was finished.

I cannot look at what he gave us and think of fatherhood as a sentence we should spend our lives waiting to complete. There is a blessing in remaining present for another generation. There is purpose in becoming the older man whose family knows they can turn to him.

Gerald helped me see that growing older can deepen a man’s usefulness to the people he loves. His experience can become their counsel. His patience can help steady them. His faith can give them an example to follow when their own lives become difficult.

If you have a man like Gerald in your life, cherish him. Spend time with him. Ask him questions. Pay attention to the way he treats people, especially when they disappoint him or need something from him. Let him know what his life has meant to yours.

If you never had that example, seek out men whose lives are worth learning from. We need those relationships. We need people who can show us how to carry responsibility with grace and how to remain faithful through seasons we have not yet lived.

As I remember Gerald, my gratitude brings me back to the family God has entrusted to me.

I have a wife to love, children to raise, and an example to set. I have decisions ahead of me that will reveal how deeply I have taken his lessons to heart. Remembering him asks something of the way I live.

I pray that my generation will recognize the value of men like him. I pray we will remain willing to love our families through changing seasons, to offer help with humility, and to keep growing in our calling until our last breath.

Gerald never stopped being a father. His family kept growing, and his love kept reaching.

Thank you, Grandaddy, for your life and for the way you loved our family. Thank you for loving my dad. Thank you for helping raise Megan. Thank you for becoming a father figure to me and for showing me how much one faithful man can mean to generations.

I pray my family will one day recognize something of you in the way I loved them.

Courtesy of the Rucker family.