My Father’s Hands
by Fanning Yater Tant (1908-1988)
written in the 1970s
Not God. I am thinking of my own natural father, Jefferson Davis Tant. It is June 4, 1941. A few scores of us are gathered in the old auditorium of the Central Church of Christ, Cleburne, Texas. My father’s body lies in the casket before us. W. K. Rose has just finished a simple, moving tribute to the one who will walk among us no more. The casket is opened, and friends and relatives file slowly past, looking for the last time upon the mortal remains of the fallen soldier. Finally, the family is left alone for a few sad moments of farewell.
And what is the most vivid picture that comes to me as I remember that poignant hour? For some strange reason, my gaze focused on my father’s hands – strong, calloused, and worn with eighty years of toil and labor. Through half of my lifetime, that picture has not faded from my mind. I remember how the thumbs curled back, and that the skin of the hands was clear and unspotted, contrary to what it is often seen in the hands of the aged, and especially unlikely in view of his Irish heritage. Those were the hands that had held tightly of the bridle reins as he had tamed the furious contortions of many a bucking bronc; those were the hands that had picked wild berries in the hills of Georgia after Sherman’s armies had burned to the ground every building that stood on the farm; and had destroyed every vestige of food that could be found. Those were the hands that had baptized many thousands of people into the body of Christ and had written even more thousands of letters (quite often frustrating and unintelligible to the recipients because of their incredible illegibility).
My father was a strong man, both physically and mentally. His hands revealed that strength. They were worn and roughened by honest toil. They knew the feel of an axe handle, the warmth of a branding iron – and the smooth hard quiver of a bamboo fishing pole when a four-pound catfish was tugging at the other end of the line. These were the hands that had clung with such desperate despair to the wife of his young manhood as she slipped so quickly into death after four short years of marriage. These were the hands that had served both as mid-wife and physician at the birth of my older brother “because we were too poor to pay the $20.00 a doctor would have charged” as my mother told me so many years later.
They were hands that had given strength and courage to many a sad and weary heart whose owner had felt their tightening grip as he battled with some fierce grief or tragedy. They were hands of friendship, compassion, and sympathy. They were hands also that had hesitated to “apply the rod” (and how he applied it!) to his own children as they were passing through the formative years of childhood. They were the hands of authority – but also of security. Strength was there, and we knew it.
More than thirty years have passed since I stood beside my father’s bier, gazing so intently at his hands. It is as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. Somehow, my father’s hands, lying so still on the warm gray fabric of his burial suit (a gift, incidentally, of John W. Akin) seemed to symbolize his life, a life of fantastic activity, which had known hardship and heartache; but which had been rich in love and friendship, and in service to his Master. They were the hands of a man who had lived his life rather than merely marking time through his allotted span. As I gazed at my father’s hands that day in June so many years ago, I felt the appropriateness of the brief quotation which he himself had selected as an inscription to be engraved on the stone marker at his head: “I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith.” (II Timothy 4:7)
