Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family

chapter forty-one

The funeral for my father stood in stark contrast to the private service for my mother. John Rice loved people and people loved him. Jerusalem Baptist Church, where Clara worshiped, was filled to the rafters. The pastor, Jonathan Staples, gave the eulogy. He was yet another young man whom my father had befriended and mentored. Clara and I sang “In the Garden,” a song that my father had remembered and sung until the very end.

The service ended with a little jazz ensemble playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” for this son of Louisiana.

We laid Daddy to rest at Alta Mesa Memorial Gardens, not far from the Stanford campus, on December 28. A few years before, I’d moved my mother’s remains from Denver to the same cemetery. When I decided to do so, my father had been very pleased. But he’d reminded me that the grave is not really a Christian’s final resting place. “The Lord’s eternal home is the final destination,” he’d say. At the end of Daddy’s life, I was comforted by my faith in the truth of what he had said and my belief that he and my mother were united again.

I left for Washington about a week later. There was so much to do as the new national security advisor. I told myself that I couldn’t afford to be debilitated by my grief. I just powered through the meetings, the briefings, the calls, each day, determined to do what needed to be done. Yet since my mother’s first bout with cancer I had wondered how it would feel to live without my parents. We had been so close. Would I ever feel whole again?

Oh, how I missed them. At the inauguration in 2001, I ached to have my parents sitting on the Mall watching George W. Bush take the oath of office, ushering me into the White House as well. When I landed in Moscow aboard a plane that simply said “The United States of America,” I wanted to send them the photograph. Visiting the Holy Land, I thought of how much my father would have relished walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. Sitting in the Presidential Box at the Kennedy Center, I thought that my mother would have loved to see Aïda there and that my father would have hated it but gone along “for Ann’s sake.” And, of course, in 2010 I wanted my father to know that the New Orleans Saints had won the Super Bowl. He would have loved that!

But often it has been their presence, not their absence, that I’ve experienced. I could almost see John and Angelena Rice at the door of my West Wing office, as national security advisor, and hovering over me as I flew into a combat zone in Baghdad or Kabul as secretary of state. “You are well prepared for whatever is ahead of you,” I could hear them say. “Now don’t forget that you are God’s child and He will keep you in His care.” They remain by my side. And I feel today, as before, the overwhelming and unconditional love of the extraordinary, ordinary parents that I was so blessed to have.