It was an honor to know him!

This was the last time I saw my father before his passing in 2008. He was 89 years old and used up every once of strength he had and then silently flew away. I visited with him about 5 weeks before he died. What a precious and godly man he was! No daughter could even have had better!


One of my all time favorite movies is "The Silence of the North" from 1981. Ellen Burstyn plays the lead roll. It is hard to find now in anything but VHS but it is the true story of Olive Frederickson, a woman who braved the northern wilds of the beautiful Canadian wilderness in about 1920 with a wandering trapper husband. I won't tell you the whole story but in one part her small son dies of meningitis. She is grieving so deeply when one of her young daughters, breaks through the darkness of her mourning when she said this to her mother, "it was an honor to know him".
I feel that way about my father. It was a honor to know him!

Neil Young wrote the song that is on the movie. It was sung by Lacy J. Dalton. Here are part of the lyrics:

...You and I, we were captured
We took our souls and we flew away
We were right, we were giving
And that's how we kept what we gave away

Oh, this old world keeps spinning round
It's a wonder tall trees ain't layin' down
There comes a time

Comes a time...

My daddy loved Nature as well as it's Creator God. And I love reading the writings of John Muir. Here is an appropriate quote that makes me think of my daddy, his life, and his loves.

"Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.   
 ~ "My First Summer in the Sierra", John Muir (1911)

Photo taken by my niece of the mountain where my parents lived and we grew up in Western North Carolina.