00019 · Milo’s 101 farmhouse years

My great uncle Milo recently passed. He was one of the best humans I have known. He set the gold standard of what it is to be a good man.

I’ll never come close to achieving his level of dedication to family, love of community, kindness, and hard work. I am grateful to have been shown what’s possible in a human lifetime, and not rest on low standards.

I believe he never committed an intentionally bad action in his long life life. I never heard him or his wife, Corrine, say a bad thing about anyone.

He once said about a person we mutually knew, “He has a different way about him.” I was shocked, wondering how many kittens that man had drowned for Milo to not find something kind to say about him.

He had three living brothers: Alvin, Orrin, and Seiferd. We all called them Ovvie, Dully, and Si (sigh). Their sister Malinda was my grandma, and mother to my dad. The brothers were farmers, and had land bordering the farm my father grew up on. My dad was two when his father died in a farming accident, and these men stepped up and stepped in. My dad glowed with admiration and love for them, and I saw these men as humble gods who walked the earth.

The four of them represented every voice in a quartet. They sang the Gospel as sweetly and tightly as the Beach Boys. With other men in their church, they cut records and toured. Like all their other talents, they were humble about it.

Their skill in carpentry led them to creating their own construction company. Their favorite thing was to knock a hole in the wall and put in a window. Every homeowner was delighted to hear them singing hymns while they worked. Milo and his brothers let the light in.

And they worked hard.

They also loved company and gatherings and laughter. Hanging out with them was 80 percent bullshitting and joking, with ten percent making sure they knew where you were at in life, and ten percent making sure you knew you were loved. They were champion hand-shakers in greeting, strong huggers in goodbyes.

I am blathering. There’s no way to convey the greatness of Milo and his ilk.

My earliest memory of Milo and Corrine was when I was four or five years old. We were driving to Minneapolis, and they happened to pass us, driving one of the many Buicks they owned over the decades. The traffic must have been light on the two-lane highway, because each car rolled down their windows, and we chatted with one another at highway speed. Them adults delighted in the absurdity of it, as a chid I was in awe.

“Do you want an apple?” Milo drifted back a bit so he could ask me that question, still hurtling across the prairie. I nodded yes, and my dad and Milo pulled their cars together so close the side mirrors were almost touching. Corrine passed the apple out the passenger window and into my outstretched hand. I was so proud I didn’t drop their gift.

Always going for the laugh, Milo was. Always making sure the interaction was a delight.

He was born in a farmhouse in August of 1922. He lived in that same house for 101 years. It’s possible such a thing won’t happen again.

In that century of good living, he was a loving and faithful husband of 78 years. He spent the last few weeks of his life in the local nursing home. Corrine visited him there constantly. The old chapel of that nursing home had been converted to the hospice room a while back, so stained glass light filled the room as they sat together. Towards the very end, he once awoke, unsure of his surroundings—the heavenly light, the angel by his side. He blinked at her confusedly. Corrine said, “Milo, do you know who I am?”

And he gave the answer he could only give to her, the most Milo answer ever. “Of course I know you. You’re as cute as the day I first laid eyes on you.”