My sister called me from my parents' home in Minnesota this
morning. Dad passed away as he slept this morning. At the end, he was where he
wanted to be, at his home in Kensington, Minnesota. I am informed that he
was not in pain.
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But this is not a sad entry, it is a happy entry. Happy
because, in the end, Dad was exactly where he wanted to be; happy because Dad
had a really good life, a family who loved him, two excellent marriages, and
children who revered and wished to emulate him; happy because you could not
know Denny Bergquist without being touched in some small way by this man who
was, in many ways, larger than life.
Were I to take a page from Dad's playbook, this entire
eulogy would be largely sophistic, sprinkled sparingly with just enough actual
facts to make it seem more an accurate accounting than the work of fiction it would
be. For years, for example, Dad insisted that our name, Bergquist (literally
"Mountain-Branch" in Swedish) was an actual Swedish word which meant
the green and growing branches at the very top of a pine. It wasn't until we
started questioning this (still years before the advent of the internet,
wherein we could easily check) that he introduced the idea that our name
resulted from a misunderstanding at Ellis Island.
But this is a celebration and you should know Dad for who he
was. Dad had an uncanny knack of getting people to like him. I have no
recollection of ever having met someone who didn't more-or-less instantly like Dad.
His sharp wit was almost always used for the purpose of entertaining –and he
enjoyed a good joke as much as anyone. Even when he said something negative
about someone, which was rare, he always coated it with enough kindles to make
even the target of his comment accept it as constructive.
Dad had a way of teaching a lesson which made the student
often fail to realize they were being taught. I am still coming to admire and
realize the lessons he taught me as a child. Dad taught by demonstration. I
will never forget the first time I realized he had taught me a lesson by this
means. When I was younger, I was (and please gasp here – at least try to act
like you can't believe it…) something of a brat! If I could get someone into
trouble I would. There was a phase I went through of being a right pain in the
ass; snitching on my siblings, and telling everyone everything that they wanted
to know even if they had no business knowing it.
Now, all my life I have LOVED trains. Good thing too, with
Dad being a railroad man! I would stare at trains for hours out his office
window when he took me to work with him. I loved the rail yard and would, if
not for the fear that he would kill me for going out into such a dangerous
place – go out and stare at them more closely. Anyway, one day we were driving
down to the Everglades and Dad spotted one of the Florida East Coastline crews
stopped on a siding. Dad pulled the car over and looked into the back seat.
"You guys want to go for a ride in the engine?" he asked.
Well! I was absolutely beside myself. As he walked over to
talk to the crew I could barely keep myself from bolting from the car to run to
the train. To this day, I have no idea what really transpired at the train –
but the effect was the same regardless. Dad got back in the car looking
absolutely crushed and informed us that we would not be riding in the train
that day. One of the crew members was a bit of a gossip since having guests in
the cab was against the rules, Dad could get in trouble.
Did I say Dad was crushed!? I was absolutely gutted. But I
realized that the only reason that we weren't going on the train was that
somebody could not keep to themselves something that they should. Needless to
say, my tattling days were over. It was years before I realized that Dad had
probably orchestrated the entire incident for specifically that reason.
That was the kind of person Dad was, though. He made you
want to learn the lessons he had to teach. I am so glad that I had the
opportunity to spend time with him both this year, and when his cancer was initially
found four years ago. He will be missed, but I feel so glad to have had the opportunity
to know him for the fifty-plus years that I had.
Wherever you are today I can only hope that you have someone
as instructive in your life.
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