On New Year's Eve, my dad's girlfriend of 16 years went to take him some soda because he had said he wasn't feeling well. He didn't answer the door, so she left it by his door and sent him a text so he could grab it when he woke up. She went back on New Year's Day to check on him because she hadn't heard from him. When she got there, the bottle of soda was still there, and he still wasn't answering the door or his phone, and that's just not like him. So she called the police to do a welfare check on him, and when the police arrived and got into his apartment, they found him sitting in his recliner in front of the TV. The medical examiner came and checked him and determined that there was no foul play involved.

Meanwhile, 64 miles away, I'm at home getting ready to head up to Portland to visit my dad, and the phone rings. I don't recognize the number, but I answer it anyway. It's the medical examiner calling to ask if I know someone by the name of Chris Keuscher, and I tell him, "Yeah, that's my dad. What's up?" The next words that came out of his mouth broke my heart and shattered my world... "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but your dad's body was found in his apartment this morning, and I need you to come down here so we can release his body to you so the officers can be released from the scene." And I fell apart.

I arrived a little over an hour later, and my brother was already there, so the police were gone, but my dad's body was still there in his recliner. He almost just looked like he was sleeping. I had to see for myself if he was really gone, so I went up to him and put my hand on his shoulder, which was cold. I hugged him because I knew it would be the last time I'd be able to. He really was gone; he had passed hours before my fiancé and I got there. I know there's nothing I could have done differently that would have changed anything. He had heart disease, and it finally won. My dad put up one hell of a fight, though! He outlived both of his parents and all of his siblings, including his identical twin!

My dad, Christopher Keuscher, was an extraordinary man. When he was born, he was the smaller twin, and they weren't sure he was going to make it, so his parents named his twin after his father even though my dad was born first. When he was a kid, he went to Catholic school, but he was left-handed, so the nuns used all kinds of methods to make him right-handed like everybody else. They failed miserably.

I just realized that if I tell his whole story, it'll be too long for anybody to read in one sitting, so I'll just give you a brief overview of the kind of man he was: When I was a kid, we converted from Catholic to Christian, and my dad started studying the Bible, and we'd have family devotion every morning where he'd sit and read the Bible to us, and then we'd discuss what we learned in that chapter. Later on, he went on to preach in the rescue mission and the Union Gospel Mission, and then at the Marion County Jail. He was in the army for almost 20 years in military intelligence and earned multiple awards and certificates for various things. He taught Sunday school for a while when we started attending a church that was just getting started. He raised kids that weren't biologically his, became a volunteer as a senior health care advocate, helped more people in his life than anyone else I've ever seen before, and when his hair and beard turned white, he became the best Santa Claus I've ever seen, bringing joy and hope to thousands of little kids.

My dad was the kindest, gentlest, most caring man I've ever had the privilege of knowing. The biggest problem we're facing now is that as amazing as my dad was, he never got to be wealthy. Neither did any of the rest of our family. He passed away not ever having owned his own home. He lived in an apartment and lived on social security and his army pension, which wasn't really very much when you take into account the cost of living nowadays. As of right now, we don't have the money to bury him. He always made it clear to us that he didn't want to be cremated. And he had always expressed a strong desire to have a military funeral "with all the bells and whistles." And while the VA will help to cover some things, they don't cover everything, like removal of the body from the home, embalming, dressing and preparing the body for viewing, the actual viewing, the church service, and anything the family might need, such as transportation. I've never had to make arrangements for a funeral before, but as I get deeper into it, I'm realizing that I'm going to need a lot of help because nobody in the family has the kind of money it's going to take to honor my Daddy's last wishes. So please help us if you can, and if you can't help financially, you can still help by sharing this post. Thank you for taking the time to read this.