Obituary of Robert C. Billingsley

My name is Elise. My daddy always called me Sissy. This is about him. This may not seem like your typical obituary, because it isn't. I will tell you the basics, my dad's birthday (January 17th, 1930) and his death date (April 30th, 2015) and about the people he is survived by (my mom, Elisabeth, his wife of 60 years, me and my brother Bob, and his grand kids Mariah and Haysten) and that he was a military Vietnam vet (1966/1967). He was a baseball coach, and a member of the American Legion for 39 years, and a retired Civil Service Federal Employee. You can look it all up, it is fact. And while this is important, and probably the things that will be left in the record at the end of all time, it tells you nothing about my dad's heart, and even less about his soul. My dad believed people had souls. The go-to-heaven kind, and the kind that could be heartless. He would quietly worry about children who were hurt or ignored, and would know that he would never get to meet those people in his heaven, because God would never allow them in. This is not a religious thing. In my dad's world, this was truth. Kids first. Period. Anyone who harmed children had their own special place in Hell, and my dad was quick to point it out. He had no time for that. He showed this dedication to kids in a lot of small, behind-the-scene ways. He coached baseball for as long as anyone can remember. This means a lot of kids heard his voice. It was the only time he was loud. Teaching and expecting. Never perfection, but always your best. Get your glove on the ground. Get under the ball. Keep your eye on the pitch. Run your fastest. Show up. Cheer for your team. Try harder next time. If it was your error, own it, say you are sorry, do better. Never be sad about the loss, just learn from the pain. A pretty amazing blueprint for life. Show up. Do your best. Love is like that. My son would tell you that he remembers his "Papa" playing soccer with him wearing slippers. It made me laugh when I asked about a favorite memory, and that is what I got back. This, according to my 11 year old, happened last year. My dad would have been about 83 or so by then, already the pains in his body that had him unable to move on many days, and that tired him easily, but still, there he was, outside on the strip of grass in the front yard of the house he lived in for 54 years, showing up, doing his best. There is a picture of my dad kneeling down next to my then-toddler daughter and helping her find Easter eggs. He had been helping with the American Legion annual Easter egg hunt for a decade at that point, but having his girl there made him light up. She made him laugh and could get him to do anything for her, including, clearly, save her the best and brightest eggs for her basket. Her favorite memory of him is rather recent. True to the way my daughter sees things, this wasn't about a thing, but about a feeling. She had been preparing for her school musical and practicing all the time. My dad would talk about it all the time, and encouraging her to keep going, she would be wonderful. Her Papa showed up the night of the play, and sat near the front. He clapped the loudest, I am sure, and she says that when he told her it was the best play he had ever seen, she knew, down where it counted, that it was the absolute truth. This afternoon I talked to my brother. I asked him what he remembered that made dad, well, dad. Baseball, fishing, his love for kids and animals, especially old hunting dogs, were the easy answers, the ones I expected. The there was the story about the fake dog doo. Yes, rubberized feces. This made us both laugh. In my brother's telling, my dad got miles and miles out of this gag. His victims were often family members from Europe, or one of my younger cousins, sent to get something or going into the room where they were staying, and there on the floor would be my dad's welcome gift. When invariably we would here the sound of disgust from the target, my dad would laugh so loud and hard he would make himself cry. His eyes would crinkle and his smile would beam. He would walk right in and offer to clean it up, and would pick it up with a bare hand, making the victim gag, and then usually hit him for having been tricked, which only made my dad laugh louder. My brother was quick to point out that my dad got a lot of miles out of that fake shit. He wished he still had it, for both nostalgia and current entertainment value, though we are sure, in a twisted bit or irony, that one of the dogs probably chewed it up. Sports were a constant thing around my dad. My dad played baseball, fast-pitch softball, and basketball. My mom tells the story of the one and only basketball game my dad played in that she did not attend. Seems this important game was an old rivalry. My dad was tall and good at basketball, and was the starting center for his team. That night, when my dad came home, my mom enthusiastically asked him who won. He, however could not tell her, because in one of the final points of the game he was hit in the face on the rebound and bit all the way through his tongue. He was bloody and beat up, and had a tear that could not be stitched up. It healed, eventually, leaving a hole in its place that never went away. My mom remembers that she had to cook mushy soft food for him, and puree it all, for the next 6 weeks. He ate it through a straw. Growing up, when my dad wasn't coaching or playing, he was watching and listening to every sport out there. If you came into the house, the first thing you saw is my dad's recliner. This recliner was situated so that it faced the TV in the living room, and was also in line of sight for the TV in the den. There was always a transistor radio next to the recliner, on the floor. On any given summer Saturday afternoon, both TVs and the radio would be tuned to a different ballgame. My brother and I would wait, somehow thinking "this time" would be different, for my dad to be snoring in his chair, as if this would somehow make the difference in our plan. We would try to sneak in, mouse-quiet, and turn the TV to a different station. This was the game. It would, with out a heartbeat's break, wake my dad up. We would always argue that he was snoring, and that he had no idea what was happening in any of the games. And, just a fast and predictably, he could tell us score, inning, and even pitch count of the current batter on all three games. It blew us away, and as an adult I suspect he was fake snoring just to play along. My mom thinks it was a superpower exclusive to my dad. My brother and I would end up outside, pouting and laughing at the same time, plotting the strategy of the next week. My mom tells of the years of moving. Barstow, Germany, Georgia, Texas. The year of waiting in Marina as my dad went to Vietnam. The years of not moving and growing a family, when part of her longed for the road again, though my dad loved the stability. My dad would talk often about his home growing up in Yreka, and the chaos that comes with being one of ten siblings. Lester, Jimmy, Harold, Kenny, Roy, Alfred, Freida, Patty, and June (though I know I got the names out of order, but with so many I am glad I remembered all the names). Harold, Patty, and June are left to tell the stories now, and I will seek them out in the next little while and ask them to share about my dad as a kid, and the adventures I am sure they all had living in the country. It will help us all I am sure. I am sure we will find things to laugh about. Telling my memory about my dad is a little harder. I am still feeling a little disconnected. Every bit of who he is still spins in my head and settling on just one never feels quite right. There are fishing stories, and camping stories, and softball stories. There are friends and parties and BBQs. There are horseshoe tournaments and cribbage marathons, and single-minded-destination-oriented road trips. There was a father-daughter dance (yep, just one), and hours of yard work, and car washing, and garage sweeping. But the story I will remember most is that in the last week of his life, I got about 2 hours of crystal clarity when, while holding his hand, my dad and I just talked. We talked about work, and about baseball, and about people. We talked about my kids' future, and about mistakes. And about love. About not having regrets, because if he taught me anything it was that you show up, and you do your best. He said he did his best, and always showed up, and that he hoped it was enough. I told him, yep, that love is like that, and said thank you. And then we watched a baseball game and I held his hand as he slept, because love is like that, too. So remembering him is going to be easy. He gave me a really good blueprint for how to keep living without him. Heart and soul. Please share your thoughts, and memories too. Add to the love. We all want hear them. Because he, like this obituary, was anything but typical.