Our dad, Delbert Van Dusen, died peacefully and surrounded by love on March 26 ^th , 2021. As we shared memories of him, his face relaxed until only his most tender self was left and his last breath was a softest exhale, releasing his soul onto the next plane.

The breadth of his life cannot be expressed by a few lines. The impact of his existence can only be fully known by those who will continue in his absence. Yet, words are how we honor who he was to us.

He was born in the Boise valley, where the sky is as vast and blue as his eyes. Those expressive, expansive eyes peer at us from a tin tub of bath water in the yard of a two-story farm house. From that house he bicycled as a boy to the main road, where he left his bike to wait while he hopped on a bus to town for a movie. This spirit of adventure and freedom remained for most of his life.

He took his unique smile, crafted by a kick to the mouth by his favorite cow, on many adventures. Encouraged by his cousin Bill, he explored the world though reading, and later in the flesh. There were trips down the west coast, going from state to state on the sand. His wild and wavy hair tossed about by the salty breeze coming through the open windows of an unairconditioned car.

There was life in New York City, home of his love for Lo Mein and sweet and sour sauce. There was Oregon, where the humidity mildewed his clothes while he worked at a jobs training program for whom we now refer to as at-risk-youth.

His most significant adventure involved a 1949 Plymouth and a border crossing into Mexico. There he met our mom and fell in love not just with her, but with a culture and with a way of life. They had a romantic love affair filled with distance and hand written letters from New York to Mexico City and back. Genetics and culture merged to create a daughter and then a son. We were welcomed and encouraged to discover the world with our only guidance being that it was our own story to define.

There were trips to El Desierto de Los Leones, trips to the snowy mountains that surround Boise. Trips with extended family caravanning to Atequiza, the man-boys at the wheel playing with their walkie-talkies. Beach outings. All the things that fill family albums and yet are uniquely significant.

And in between and within were dinner parties with friends, the deafening conversations of happy tipsy adults, children playing in the midst. The attention seeking turn-table stopping every 20 minutes or so. There was medical school. Our grandfather brimming with joy and pride at the graduation party. Then a home psychiatric practice that normalized mental illness for us. The creation of a language school, with its place in history a little blurry. Cancer research bringing him back home to the United States. A brief stent as an import-export entrepreneur, followed quickly by a fellowship in pathology. A job in the Midwest, one in the gorgeous landscape of the upper peninsula of Michigan, where deer feasted in the yard and the expanse of trees surrounded the house. Then Texas, where we lost our mom, and he lost his wife. Each life stage with its own geographical and social background. New friends, new conversations, new joys and sorrows.

To his genetic line, we added grandchildren that he took in quietly, sometimes from a distance and sometimes from noisy living rooms full of life. He warmed bottles, held babies, fed children ice-cream, and watched them grow into developing women. So many tender moments held in the lives of his five granddaughters. And in those of his two great-grandchildren, to whom he is Bis, a comfortable gringo in the Mexcan role of bisabuelo.

Hi will be missed and hold him close in our memories and in our movements. When we look in the mirror and recognize him in us and remember what a good man he was.

Please share with us the memories you have of him. Paint into existence your moments with him so that they may become him in all of us.