Brian Knutson
24.04.14
Stu canoeing (picture from a video of the Kansas City Canoe Club at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3pijMmnZ9M)
As Stu Knutson’s son, I did not witness the first third of his life … but was fascinated by his pictures, films, and stories.
The pictures depicted him peering seriously from the back row of his kindergarten class at Prairie School, and later clowning around to test a pinhole camera he had set up in front of his home in Mission Hills.
The films showed him nimbly piloting the riffles of Arkansas rivers in the back of his canoe, and swishing down the mountain slopes of Colorado in baggy pants, leather boots, and long narrow wooden skis.
The stories told of his epic trips through the Rocky Mountains, summiting the entire Mummy Range in one hike, and scrambling over harrowing knife-edge ridges in the Never-Summer Range to evade incoming lightning storms.
These pictures, films, and stories portray Dad as the open, adventurous, and fun-loving team player that I later came to know.
My own memories began with the middle third of Dad’s life.
Mom necessarily arrived first, and has been at his side ever since, for over 60 years.
Initially, they were a couple playing tennis above Brush Creek, then we were a triplet inhabiting a duplex facing the Plaza, and soon after a quadruplet homesteading a split-level on the edge of the Overland Park suburbs, flanked by wheat fields and longhorn steers.
During the weekdays, while my sister and I walked to school, Dad drove to work, either downtown or in the country. Otherwise, he was with us -- for dinners, to explore exotic restaurants after church, for scouting campouts, for band concerts, to cohost friends from other countries, and even to travel to those countries.
Summers in Colorado were a special treat, and Dad loved to teach us all of the trails and lakes and mountains, until we eventually ended up joining the camp that he had attended in his youth.
Though typically a man of few words, he loved to regale us with funny maxims (some lifted from camp) like: “De gustibus non est disputandum,” “Waste not, want not,” and “Leave it better than you found it.” While we may have found them amusing, we also knew that he lived by those sayings. He avoided uttering disparaging words about others, never wasted money or food, and never met a piece of trash he didn’t pick up.
The last third of Stu’s life began with retirement. With the kids off to college and the disappearance of an inherited dog, Mom and Dad indulged in travel. You will have likely heard adventurous tales of Dad bungee jumping or eating witchety grubs in exotic locales.
But Dad later developed a dementia called Balint’s Syndrome, which slowly progressed over two decades. As a neuroscientist, it was frustrating to know what was happening but not how to stop it. Visuospatial abilities were the first to go, but thankfully, socioemotional sensitivities were the last. In the very end, Dad went on hospice at Brookhaven after a fall, where he persevered nine months until passing away, peacefully and in the presence of his family.
This made me wonder about the afterlife. I don’t know much about it, but think I’ve seen a glimpse.
In college, I was climbing a cliff without protection and fell. Afterwards, I remember a cool light flowing, surrounding, and engulfing me with a feeling of peacefulness.
Fortunately for me, a pair of hikers saw where I landed and rushed up to keep me awake until the medics arrived.
So I wasn’t anxious when Dad passed, because I knew he was going to a better place.
In fact, I think he described it in the verse of a song he wrote with his friend Tully Reed:
“Oh I’ve paddled my canoe
On the Current and the Blue
And I’ll paddle up to heaven if I can
To that great big campground
Where litter’s never found
I’ve got those gravel blues”
“Leave it better than you found it.”
That’s what Dad said.
And that’s what he did.
And now … it’s up to us.
