I have spent a lot of time thinking about what my parents would say about this event today.

My dad would say, “Good job not scheduling it on the fishing opener. People want to go to the cabin for the fishing opener.”

My mom and I had a lot of secret codes. My mom’s code for this event would be “FHB.” That is code for “Family Hold Back.” She would want to make sure that there are enough desserts downstairs for everyone, so she would ask family to hold back.

I think those are pretty good lessons. Prioritize the cabin and make sure everyone has enough.

I was thinking about the lessons my dad taught me, the one he called the “most important lesson.”

One time, we were on a family trip to France, and my parents’ credit cards weren’t working. We had to go to Western Union, so Tom could wire us some money. After that, my dad told me many times in my life, if you are lost, if you don’t know what to do, call Tom. If you are lost, lean on your cabin family. This is what we can do. We are all lost without my parents, but we can lean on each other. We can lean on our found family.

One of my mom’s favorite Christmas Carols was “Good King Wenceslas,” which has one of our codes inside it. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, it is about a wealthy king in what is now the Czech Republic. He and his page see a poor man on a snowy night. The king and his page bring firewood and food to this poor man. The page explains to his king that he does not think he can walk anymore, because it is so cold. The king tells him to walk in his footsteps.

The next verse goes: “In his master’s steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted. Heat was in the very sod where the Saint had printed.”

“Dinted” is a joke that I shared with my mom and dad. Often my dad would drop off me and my mom here at Mt. Olivet for Christmas and ask if we planned to “dint” home.

The story of this Christmas carol is about taking care of others. And taking care of others is a lesson that my parents taught me and my sister.

How can we walk in their footsteps? How can we carry on their traditions? How can we “dint?”

We can follow in their footsteps in love. My parents had an amazing love story. They were married for over 50 years. My parents slow danced in the kitchen. In the 90s, we went on a trip to Hawaii with many of our cabin friends. We had an underwater camera. Somehow, my dad got ahold of this underwater camera. When we got the pictures, we expected snorkeling pictures; pictures of fish. Instead, we found a disturbing number of underwater pictures of my mom. On that trip, they had been married 30 years. Wouldn’t we all want to be loved so fiercely, after 30 years, or 50 years of marriage?

In August, my dad and I drove home from the cabin together for what would be the last time. We were listening to Country Music in the car. One of the songs was about how much this man loved his wife. My dad stopped the radio to tell me he felt so lucky that my mom had chosen him.

May we all be so lucky as to have a love story like theirs.

And not just love for each other, but love of family. My sister and I have many nicknames for our parents. One of our nicknames for our mom is “Dobbie,” after the beloved house elf in Harry Potter. My mom loved this nickname. She used to say, “Dobbie loves to care for her family.”

My parents had endless love for their grandchildren. Jack got to go to “mommy and me” swimming lessons with Grandpa, together in the pool. Emily spent hours cooking with grandma, be it apple butter or salmon poached in white wine. Peter shared his love of math with grandma and climbed on grandpa’s back while he was doing yoga. My dad was ever the goofball with his children and grandchildren. He put olives in his glasses to look like eyeballs. He made puppets. He played Elsa with Peter, including dramatically dropping his beach towel cape at the appropriate time.

My parents had careers taking care of others and taught me and Ellie to do the same. We walk in their footsteps every day. Much like my dad, my career is about mentoring lawyers. Much like my dad, I have developed lifelong friendships with the lawyers I work with every day. Much like my mom, Ellie is a teacher. There is a magnet on Ellie’s fridge that exemplifies how giving she is and how my mom was. The magnet says, “Teachers are the only people who steal supplies from home and take them to work.” We can follow in their footsteps by caring and helping those around us.

So what is next? Or as my dad would ask, what are we going to do for dinner?

When we are lost, my dad would tell me to call Tom. My mom would tell me to get dinner on the table.

At the end of her career, my mom had options open to her. She chose to work at a school that was entirely English-Language-Learners. She worked with students from all over the world, together, in one classroom. Her students were teenagers who had never been to school; never learned to hold a pencil. These children lived through war, starvation, and separation from their families, and made it to America for a better life. Here too, my mom strove to provide that consistent normalcy; to teach basic math for job skills and to pass the math test to get a real high school diploma. A steady presence. No judgment; just love. Love of all of these kids. All these children deserved love, and lunch. And knowing my mom, the lunch probably included cottage cheese.

What would my mom say to do when we are this lost without her? She would say: show up, bring a casserole, babysit. My mom often said, when people are having a hard time, we can provide consistency and normalcy. We can have dinner on the table.

We can follow in their footsteps every day. We can help each other, lean on our found family, love ferociously, and always have hors d’oeuvres.

I met John on a rainy Monday morning in June 1972. We were seated across the desk from Faegre & Benson’s hiring partner the first day of our summer clerkships. John had come to law school after graduate school at Brown and two years in the Peace Corps with Susan in South Korea. I had come to law school after four years in the Army, including a year in South Korea. So we were both the same age (born just two weeks apart) and married. We both returned to the Firm the following year as associates and spent our entire careers there. No surprise that we would become friends.

Tom and Barb Kimer invited us to Big Sand Lake in 1979, and BSL life grabbed us. They invited John and Susan about the same time and neither couple has missed a summer since. We all started having children about that time, and John and Tom, being avid golfers, would get 6:00 am tee times so they could get back to the Lake about the time the children would be casting about for something to do. Often that meant being dragged behind the Barbie Sue on various water toys, and John spent hours driving the boat and patiently enduring the children’s criticisms whenever they fell off of whatever they had been on, as those falls were always the driver’s fault. As a result of John’s patience with endless attempted starts and Susan’s and Barb’s patience in helping each of them “up,” they all learned to water ski.

As the children approached school age, they all began to snow ski as well as water ski, and the families made several group trips to Colorado and Utah (who can forget Heber City?). John and Susan were patient teachers on the slopes as well as on the water. That patience found them still on skis a generation later teaching their grandchildren to ski. On ski trips the adults usually treated themselves to one adult dinner leaving the children with pizzas and movies under Katy’s watchful eye. I particularly remember a dinner at The Keystone Ranch. It was an expensive night out, capped by John’s remark that “it was good to know you could still get a nice dinner for a grand.”

When Elliott was about 12 he wanted to learn to play golf, and I decided that I would try to learn the game at the same time. John, forever a student of the game, was a patient teacher for both of us. Over the years since, I have played golf with John more than any other person. Tom Kimer would say the same thing but he knew how to play. John’s interest was due in part to the interest of his father, Dick, also an avid and able golfer. John’s parents were frequent guests at the Lake, and we played many rounds with Dick as well. As Dick’s health began to wane, particularly his eyesight, John patiently and lovingly kept him on the course even if it just meant his riding in the golf cart.

As grandchildren came along, John and Susan were again patient teachers. For example, swimming. How could I not mention swimming? John and Susan loved to swim, and they made sure their children and their grandchildren became good swimmers. And hunting, the only activity (other than knitting) John and Susan did not do together. John made sure Jack learned to hunt.

When the Kimers began their extended winter stays in Palm Springs and then Boca Grande, they invited us all to join them for a week, and many years we did so. Jan and I often flew with John and Susan for a week’s respite from the winter and as an opportunity to hang out with friends we had known for a long long time. Those trips made obvious what we had always known: how much John and Susan enjoyed each other’s company. They played golf together, they swam together, they biked together, they did Wordles together.

For more than fifty years we witnessed their devotion to each other, and also to their children, to their grandchildren, to their siblings and to their parents. Always committed and always patient and kind. Their passing leaves a huge hole. We think about them nearly every day.