Joseph "Joe" Nix

Joseph "Joe" Nix, 55 of Ford City, passed away on Friday, July 12, 2024. His visitation will be Tuesday, July 16, 2024 from 6:00 pm until 8:00 pm at Morrison Funeral Home, Tuscumbia. His funeral service will be Wednesday, July 17, 2024 at 11:00 am in the funeral home chapel. Burial will follow in Old Brick cemetery.
If Joe wasn't working out of town for TVA as a contractor, you could find him out on Wilson or Pickwick Lake in his Bumble Bee bass boat fishing for small mouths. The only exception being Saturdays during football season where you could find him manning the grill before sitting down just in time to cheer (and oftentimes curse) for the Crimson Tide.
If I was forced to sum up my father in a single word, the only option would be "silly." His laugh after telling a truly horrible joke served as part of the soundtrack of mine and my brother Christian's childhood. Memories of Joe putting lotion on his welding-worn and weather-beaten sandpaper hands while saying "It puts the lotion on the skin or else it gets the hose again," still plays in my head anytime I do the same. I still can't watch Lord of the Rings after Joe's not-fun-for-me habit of crouching at the end of my bed doing his best Gollum impression because he knew that particular character freaked me out.
He seldom called any of the people in his life by the government name carefully picked out by a parent, rather, he would think up a truly horrendous nickname and use that exclusively. I, his daughter Berklie, endured a childhood of only being called Gertie. Which was a somehow better shortened version of my true nickname, Fatty MaGurt Berklie. His son Christian got the marginally better Boo. His wife Tia became Tinky. His stepdaughter Tayler became Tayler Hamm I Am, naturally. Growing up I was completely unaware his dear friend Andy Poss' name wasn't actually Possum.
He smiled often and freely. Unless you dared to point a camera his way, a grave error that would cause him to stare into the lens stone-faced and wholly unimpressed.
My father, like each and every one of us, was not without his flaws. If love were a game of show and tell, it was easier for him to show instead of tell. I have only a handful of memories in which he said the words I love you outloud, but his love for me was never in question. It was felt in every book purchased to keep me occupied during his fishing trips I insisted I had to tag along for, even though fishing was boring and I had a biblical fear of fish. It was felt in those trips he let me join him on despite him knowing I would grow bored once my book was done and I turned to pestering him for entertainment instead. It was felt in each dinner he cooked. In each gift given. Each time he indulged me and my brother's antics. He may not have been able to share his love in words, but he always shared it in action. And I know many of us feel the same.
Those who had the honor of knowing and loving him, of being known and loved by him, will carry the weight of his loss and our grief until we ourselves pass. But what is love if not devotion? And what is grief if not never-ending love? Though he is gone, his memory and his love will never be lost. It can't be lost because we will never finish loving him. And you cannot kill what can never die.