Here is the eulogy I (Laura) gave at dad's memorial service. It's more or less what's written here, realizing that the actual speaking of it changes it!

I’m Laura, chuck’s middle daughter. And on behalf of my mom, Diane, and my sisters, Andrea and Sara, we want to say thank you, It is a testament to my dad and my mom that you are here. My brother in law, Lars, asked, “How long does it take your folks to make life long friends?”  Ah, about 2 minutes.

It is my honor to give voice to our dad’s life for the family, connecting his story to your story and the reality that we are all swept up in God’s vast story of love. 

Dad was a Richard Rohr fan and had recently read Rohr’s new book, “The Universal Christ,” telling me, “This is it, Laura. This is his book where he figures it all out.”  I’ve only paged through my dad’s copy of the book since he died, looking at what he underlined or starred, a habit I too have when I read.  And it’s this sentence, early on in the book, that dad has marked that seems to sum up dad so well. Rohr says, “The proof that you are a Christian is that you see Christ everywhere else…in God you do not include less and less, you always see and love more and more.”

Dad was always on the lookout for people through their stories. He was always looking for the Christ in you and to include more and more. He listened to and told stories around the dinner table, or a campfire, from the pulpit, behind the wheel of a car, in the church office, or sitting at the edge of our beds, delighting us with tales that had us wide-eyed and not at all sleepy. Those bed time tales we called Make-Up Stories. And we’d wait up until he got home, late from meetings, for the chance of the story to pick up where it had been left off the previous night. He always left us hanging, wanting more.

Growing up as a pastor’s kid, mom and dad were careful to not raise us so we thought maybe we were better than or holier than other people simply because of who our dad was or how he was known in the community. They also were careful that we didn’t think we were less than others either. Time and time again, I’d get asked in school what it was like to grow up with a pastor as a dad, and the question was always framed with a “your life must be terrible” kind of mentality. I was always confused by the question as I thought my dad being a pastor was what made him so, you know, human. 

All those who gathered around a table with him knew he delighted in deep stories and deep laughter. Whether it was coffee shops or restaurants or our dining room table, there was room for you and your story no matter what it was.  Each of us kids would bring home our friends routinely for dinners on weeknights and weekends. In the words of Carleen, one of many adopted daughters, she heard him laugh harder than she thought a person could laugh. You knew the story was good if he’d forget that he’d pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and, as he really got into his story, they’d fly down, landing on the end of his nose and he was the most surprised to see them! After hearing about dad’s death, one of Sara’s high school friends left Sara a message, singing one of the graces she learned around our table. We laughed and cried around that table. We processed life and death. We told bad jokes and good stories. We confessed and forgave. Dad helped us do that together. 

Dad’s hospitality extended well beyond his own personal dining room table. Restaurant staff of all roles knew my dad by name because he learned their names, their stories. The bakery in Woodbury grew used to cousin Paul and dad showing up on Wednesdays in their Viking’s shirts holding folders to discuss the latest news and their strategies for a winning season. New employees quickly learned to get out 2 cake donuts and put them in the microwave and then poured them their coffee. All for $1.89. They were asked on numerous occasions if they were coaches or employed by the Minnesota Vikings. (We know he was so proud for those assumptions to be made.)

Dad was a voracious reader, he and my sister Andrea sharing a deep love of The Lord of the Rings and countless other books. Andrea was always bringing dad the latest thing she was reading and he’d devour it quickly. While he was in the hospital Andrea read to him from The Lord of the Rings. Where should I begin, she asked. “From the beginning,” he replied. (His urn is the Lord of the Rings book.)

He encouraged our curiosity and then would intervene when, say, 11-year old Andrea brought home Stephen King’s The Shining.  “Can I read it first?” asked dad.  And then he asked her to please wait, and so she did.

We grew up watching our dad jog each morning, rain or shine or snow, coming home with ice cycles hanging from his beard. Sara and he became jogging partners and he’d get her up even on family vacations to run through the corn fields of Iowa or the mountains of Arizona, telling her that vacation was no excuse not to get up and run. He cross country skied in the winters, I still remember the oranges and chocolate he’d pack (or maybe mom packed) to enjoy along the trail. The smell of shoe polish immediately reminds me of him and I can hear the swish of the brush on his boots, keeping them shined up.

Mom, who dad often called “Lady Di” and his Christ figure says of their early married years together, “I was so naïve. Your dad raised me through my 20s. He just told me to be who I was.” Which is quite a gift to be given as a pastor’s wife. Mom, you cut your own path as an unconventional pastor’s wife, not becoming the un-paid and un-sung partner in ministry, but remaining a faithful spouse as you pursued your own interests, friends, and career. We thank God you never learned to play the piano (You guys! She would have been the organist!) and you knew how to say no. We are grateful for your marriage to dad and the ways you kicked him in the pants when he needed it. And he got you laughing when you needed it. And I’m sorry he slept soundly through your worried nights lying awake waiting for us to come home. Sara, I will forever be jealous that you got dad’s great gift of deep sleep through most things. 

As much as dad could be the singing, laughing, dancing life of the party, he also knew when to be quiet and to just listen. He eased our broken hearts along life’s way. He listened to people’s hard just as closely as their joyful ones. He walked with people through unspeakable grief and betrayal and brokenness. Sometimes his was a quiet love. He was wise, compassionate, and kind.

And my dad, Chuck Aase, was not all saint. But he lived into the Lutheran notion of 100% sinner 100% saint well. Sometimes he was too loud and too critical.  He wasn’t known for his patience, and surprise, surprise, none of us are either. And, to put it lightly, he didn’t suffer fools gladly. When anyone was excluded or pushed out, well, he just couldn’t make sense of it.  He was always looking for ways to bend the rules so that people who hadn’t been included could be. And he was sneaky about it, with a twinkle in his eye. So if anyone could do it, he could because he was just so darn loveable. 

Dad struggled with the moves we made for his call as a pastor, aching for us girls and for he and mom, too as our family was uprooted. He struggled to make the transition from one community to the next. It makes you an outsider, moving. And I think, at his core, dad felt like an outsider. He was adopted at 2 months old and he loved his parents. Yet there was a restlessness about not knowing where he came from, not ever meeting his birth mom and dad on this side of things. But I think this woundedness, this restlessness is what caused him to reach for you. To choose each of you to be family. There is power in being chosen and he lived this through extending our family to more and more and more. Seeing Christ in everyone. He lived this as a person, as a pastor. He and mom lived it together. 

Joy is not rooted in happiness but instead in something that holds steady in the midst of storms…in the depths of life, which includes loss and pain.  My dad exuded joy. He had a zest for just being alive and it’s because of all of you. We – all of us - are his family. Now me and Sara and Andrea, we were born to him. But he chose the rest of you.  He found an origin story, a perfect place and people to belong to. Together, we all came together to create dad’s best make up story ever. 

In the first few days of what would be a 13-day hospital stay, I was sitting on the edge of his bed, holding his hand. We looked at each other and his eyes filled with tears, saying to me, “We’ve had a good run, haven’t we?” As we spoke love to each other through tears and gasps, we got to talking about what was next. Dad loved the Harry Potter series and recalled an iconic scene from the last book. Harry is in an in between life and death place and asks Dumbledore, “where will I go if I don’t go back?” And Dumbledore says simply, “On.”  

Dad and I looked at each other, our eyes dripping with tears and I said, “that’s it, dad! The universe is rigged in your favor! It’s the flow of God’s love and you’re already in it. You’ll just go on in that flow.” He nodded and smiled. This conversation with dad will give me courage and life for the rest of my days.

On his last day, as we sat with dad and spoke to him of love and silly stories and sat in silence, I suddenly remembered that I had grabbed the green Lutheran hymnal (LBW) and the red one (ELW) from my parents den at home earlier in the week. Dad’s hospital stay was a rollercoaster with wild drops and I just figured I wasn’t sure what it would look like or if I would know when he would die, so I did what a Lutheran pastor knows how to do – I grabbed hymnals. I put them in a bag and they just sat under the window in his hospital room all week. 

Dad couldn’t speak to us those last 6 days. But he could communicate with firm hand squeezes, head nods and shakes, shoulder shrugs, eye rolls and even winks. As I rushed to his bedside that last morning, he winked at me.  Well, as we pulled out the hymnals, he got his final wink, his best mischievous grin, his grandest cackle. In one was the list of hymns to be sung at his funeral, most importantly including an even longer list of hymns not to be sung or even considered being sung, thankyouverymuch. And out of the other hymnal fell a letter written to us in March of this year. It was just the very worst and the very best Chuck Aase thing he’s ever done.

During the long, tedious and unpredictable days in the hospital, I think my mom said it best. “It’s been such a privilege to know your dad for 53 years. I don’t know anyone else as well as I know him and no one knows me as well as he does. It’s just been a privilege.” 

Dad, it’s been one hell of a good run. It’s been a privilege to know you and to love you. Dance, dance, wherever you may be. You’re in the flow, laughing and making mischief! And now we echo the last words of your letter to us, the same words your mother spoke before she died, mange tusen takk -- a thousand thanks. We’d choose you all over again.