A Father's Tribute

These were the words of my brother yesterday at his son Caleb's funeral.

Caleb was born on March 6th but that was not our first memories of him, in fact Caleb had been telling us about his personality for more than three months prior to that. At first I thought Stephanie was exaggerating the extent of Caleb's kicking, that there was no way he could be as active as she was describing. By 6 months into her pregnancy, however, it became clear that Caleb wanted to meet us. So about a month early, and classified by weight as a premi, Caleb Neel Scheiern removed the barriers and allowed us to hold him in our arms. Over the next months Caleb began to show us the most incredible personality and we will hold close the memories of a wide-eyed boy who at three months old already figured out how to make his parents laugh and smiled all the larger when we did. Yes we wanted to see Caleb covered in cake frosting at his first birthday, to watch him hit a home run, and to learn to drive; but Stephanie and I are so happy because while we will miss all of those, we are given a huge gift. We will reunite in Heaven with our son, a son who we never yelled at, never sent to his room, and never had to discipline. Yes we'll miss 60 or so years on Earth, but we will spend eternity in Heaven with a son whose relationship to us has no scars, and no hurt feelings, an untarnished relationship with a son who never let us down.