Larger Than Life

(Read at Cliff Wilder's funeral for his children - Jeff, Brian, Chad, and especially Terri)

It’s a cold and clear Monday morning in Northern Michigan. It’s a beautiful day. It’s a sad day. A day of remembering. A day of honoring. A day to be together.

Cliff Wilder was the All-American man. He was a great athlete, an enthusiastic outdoorsman, a loyal provider, a loving family man, an exceptional friend, and a responsible community member. He was everything to a lot of people. Large and larger than life, he was a force to be reckoned with. He was funny and warm and kind.

Cliff played many roles to many people – to me he was like a second father. His daughter Terri and I met behind the Manton Dairy Bar when we were three years old and we were best friends from that day on. We did everything together and spent a lot of time amidst each other’s families.

So many memories of Cliff are interwoven throughout my childhood. Learning to water-ski at Bear Lake. Me holding on for dear life, trying to circle the lake as many times as I could, with him trying to dump me as we made each wide-arcing turn. Fall football weekends and a call to the Wilder house that always was answered with a “Go Hawks!” Introductions to Cliff’s friends when he would say, “And this is my other daughter . . . “ I’d stand up a little taller just to live up to those words, so proud that he’d think of me that way.

As Terri and I got older and inevitably got into more trouble, Cliff seemed to always be there. Which for us was good and bad. He protected us from our teenage selves and seemed to always know where we were. We didn’t like that so much. But secretly, I think we loved it. He had our backs and nothing truly bad could happen with Cliff watching over. Yes, larger than life, he could take care of anything.

Terri and I have talked throughout the past three weeks about her family’s losses and answers are hard to come by. I so want to give her comfort at a time when she is in so much pain. I have no answers but the following quote gave me great solace when I was trying to make sense of my own dad’s death. It is by Rainer Maria Rilke:

. . . I would like to beg you . . ., as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

When Terri and I were little she drew me a picture of a rainbow with a quote that said, “Fling me a rainbow,” I cry to the troubled sky. “And look, she flings one.” I’d like to believe that Cliff, and Jeanette, are going to be up in heaven flinging us rainbows. And as we live the questions themselves, our rainbows will take shape – one color and hope at a time.