Koos den Houting 27.1.1932-10.10.2008

My dad died on 10 October 2008.
No entry about me is complete without an entry about my dad. This is the eulogy that my brother Phil, my sister Rosie and I delivered at his funeral.

How do you do this eulogy stuff?
Too many memories, too many things to say, too much sadness, too much love.
So I’ll start with facts. Dad was born in Dordrecht in Holland and migrated here (to Australia) as an 18 year old and started at theological college soon after. He was ordained in 1958 and at his placement in Moe, he met and married mum. Three children followed. As did placements in Mildura, Maryborough, Carlton and Cowes.

In all of these placements he would be highly active in the community, especially in the areas of ecumenism and with service organisations or agencies. He saw his ministry as always far broader than the doors of the church. He was a clerk and secretary of a Presbytery, and in retirement he was strongly involved with Kilmaney Uniting Care in Bairnsdale. He was also involved in Rotary for quite a long time, and in 1996 he was named a Paul Harris Fellow.

He was an activist. You will all know that even up to the day before his death he was doing things. He said to us that he couldn’t go yet, because he had too many things to do – the organ to play, the meeting to attend, the ordination of Anne Scull in a few weeks, the fete for Johnsonville, letters to write. How does a fellow like this just drop out? It is still quite unbelievable that he did!

Yet here we are today, having gathered the marquee, the chairs, done the order of service, arranged caterers, cars, family and all and sundry; without him, to say goodbye. Can you believe that we can live without him? He would be the first to say that of course we can, and we will. But we will feel his absence with great heartache and sadness because of the type of man he was.

Dad wasn’t a saint, he, like all of us, was this funny, messy, paradox of a human being. Memories of his bloody mindedness, his irritation, and his lack of tact, pepper all of our memories. But boy, was he a good and decent man. A man with a passion for the reconciling message of Christ. In particular his commitment to the reconciliation of the churches, and to the walk of reconciliation with the Indigenous peoples of Australia, saw his involvement in these groups over decades.

He was an earthy man, who lived with the understanding that all of creation was good. He loved the water and the lakes, and cared for the environment. Many knew that he regularly walked the highway near Nicholson picking up rubbish on the side of the road. In fact, there is still a bag of rubbish sitting in the shed waiting to go into the bin in the shed from last Wednesday.
He was a fixer and recycler. If it MIGHT have been useful, it went into his store of might be useful one day things. Anyone who has seen his shed can attest to that. The photo boards we made for today are created out of things we found in the shed!

He was a lovely person to know, and he touched others with his kindness, humility and humour. He was compassionate, and despite sometimes being quite brusque, he listened to the needs of others and tried his best to meet them. During the whole of our lives we couldn’t tell you the number of people being surprised that dad was a minister because he didn’t act, think or talk like a minister. While I’m not sure what people expected, I reckon he acted, thought and talked exactly like a minister should!

There were a number of things that were high on Dad’s important list, among those were coffee, his pipe and cryptic crosswords. These were some of the things he asked for on Thursday last, defiant about his smoking until the end!

More important to him however, was his family. His brothers and sisters, and we, his immediate family, all know how much he loved us. He was strongly committed to the new den Houting tradition of gathering together as a family even when it was not a wedding or a funeral. We had been planning the next gathering in January.

His best mate and life partner was Anne (Mum). And they did it! They made a long marriage/partnership work. Mum says that of the almost 50 years they were together, she reckons only one was bad, and the last 11 years seem to have been an absolute idyll for them both. When they retired to Nicholson, we were concerned that they might start to get under each other’s feet, but they were a pretty healthy couple and they built such a retirement life together that we used to have to make appointments to see them, as they were so busy.

He loved us, his kids. We too are human and sometimes just don’t quite get things right. But we never felt unsupported by him. We will be forever grateful for his support and guidance. There is that time in your life when your parents are just beyond the pale: embarrassing, old fashioned, dreadful. But luckily, we do grow up and begin to understand the great wisdom and frailty that you can have as a human being. We had all got to that place with dad and mum. He had become a companion on the way, as well as our dad. How lucky we are!

He loved his grandchildren, Ashley, Jane, Banjo, James, Jesse, Sarah, Sam, Lucy and he had the opportunity to meet his last grandchild Alice, born about 3 weeks ago. The photo on the order of service is from the 4th October when he spent time with Phil, George and Alice in Traralgon.

Finally dad was a man of great faith and in the end lived with joy in the life that God provided him. He thanked God for the new day every morning, and for the wonderful life he and mum shared as they watched the parrots, cockatoos and assorted sundry birds entertain them every morning at breakfast.

While he loved all the parishes where he worked as a minister, his connection to the congregation at Johnsonville meant we knew there was no other place where we could have this service. He may well have retired from working behind the pulpit, but he was certainly not retired when it came to ministering to the buildings, amenities and the people of the Johnsonville congregation.

On Sunday the 5th October he preached and presided over communion in this church, and mum said it was one of the best sermons she had heard from him. He told me in hospital he thought it was pretty good too. So here is that last paragraph that he used in that sermon:

“For the followers of Jesus, there are no short cuts in the form of absolute commandments, and no ways to rationalise our way out of our obligation to love our neighbour. But there is the assurance that there is such a thing as the forgiveness of God, and the certainty that we are loved by God, that She has made us her own, and that we may press on toward the goal for the heavenly prize of the call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Thanks dad – for all of it!