Tribute to my father, Jacob Friesen
On Sunday, December 28th, at the age of 94, my father, Jacob Herman Friesen, passed peacefully from this life into the next. The past two years have been a slow decline in health with cancer and other complications, but he was bright minded, able to hear without hearing aids, and mostly mobile until the very end.
I was the last of four children and so we each have our own experiences of my father over the years. When I was born, my parents were in a position of pastoral leadership in a small church in Harrison Hot Springs, BC, Canada. It was a unique first decade of life, with living on the church property and the comings and goings of community were a natural part of the everyday of our lives. It was a beautiful location with mountains surrounding us and a lake within a 5-minute walk. My mom would go into the forest and gather ferns, moss, and other greens to make exquisite floral displays at the church and my dad preached. We lived and breathed faith and community daily.
I know many people of faith who are in a leadership role carry a persona or a mask, but I always knew that my father’s faith was deep and real for him. Although later in life, I bantered with him on theological positions where I differed in perspective, there was always a knowing that his love of God was personal, genuine, and heart-felt. I do remember many times going to his office when I was a child, and finding him kneeling at his chair. This is an image imprinted on me and perhaps one which has impacted my life more than I have known. For I have also found myself on my knees in my adult years.
It was interesting for me to find out when I began a journey into a more contemplative path in my faith, that when I was growing up dad had often taken one night out a month for personal reflection, even spending time at the Westminster Abbey in Mission, where I would go myself after I moved to Mission in my late 30s. Dad stood beside me at the last service I led at the Abbey in May of 2024, reading the gospel with his walker beside. He spoke in a resounding and clear voice with dignity.
Dad loved to ride his bike, play tennis and ping pong, and continued these activities well into his 90s. He stopped riding his bike at 92 when it seemed no longer safe due to health concerns. He and I would ride along the dike by the Fraser River, and he would be thrilled at the beauty around us. Mom had always made crepes for lunch on Saturdays when we were growing up, and after she died twelve years ago, I would sometimes make them for him. He loved food and crepes were always a highlight for him. It was only the day before he died when my brother Randy brought crepes to him for breakfast that he refused to eat them for the first time in his life. We didn’t know it would be his last day. He died peacefully in his sleep that night.
I have heard from countless people how dad impacted their lives. I got a note from someone this morning saying that dad had saved his mom’s life as she had seen my dad through his role as a counsellor through Burden Bearers and dad had validated and affirmed what was happening to her even though no one else had. As dad kept a very busy social calendar up until his death, I am sure more stories will arrive with the impact dad had on many individuals over decades of time.
He was asked to begin preaching when he was eighteen years old, and perhaps he never stopped a life of ministry from that moment on. Even when he was living at Menno Place in the last 12 years of his life, he led Bible studies every week until he was too sick to do so anymore. He would go to the hospital to visit friends, make phone calls, and check on various people. If someone came to mind from years past, he would find a phone number and call them.
It was an interesting thing when I was speaking at an event in Ladner in the spring of 2024. Someone who had known my dad from decades ago came up to me and said, you move, look, and talk like your father as we knew him. When I was a child, I had a job of cleaning the church on the property where we lived, but it was more of a magical place for me where I would stand at the front and pretend to lead. I would also sing and dance with the dust particles gathered and flung into the air like diamonds. Part of the deep work of life is to sort out our lineage, to find the gold of the inheritance we have received.
In these memories and in the soul work I have been exploring the past 30 years in my own life, I have come to appreciate the lineage of my father which lives in me. The pastoral care, the dedication for service, the inner life of devotion – these things are the baton I carry and will carry for the rest of my life. The vision of my father kneeling will perhaps be the greatest gift that lives in me and will be the path for me to follow in the days ahead. This posture is one of humility and devotion – and perhaps the place of wisdom.
Thank you for this lineage dad. May you soar with joy as you enter the life beyond.
A funeral service will be held in Abbotsford in February.
