Please accept my note of thanks for the many kindnesses shown to our family over the last several weeks. We are deeply humbled by the attendance at my father's memorial service, the cards, e-mails, flowers, offers of meals, so many kind and thoughtful words, and your many prayers. We cannot thank you enough, and you will never know how much strength has been drawn from those kind gestures. For our dear readers that we may not know as well personally, thank you for thinking of us.
Our faith provides significant comfort, and we believe Dad is in a better place. He has been relieved of his duties here and is now beginning a life of eternity, where he has no more pain, discomfort - no limitations of any kind. That last sentence cannot be overstated, and the magnitude of that concept could be discussed forever. I know these things on a cognitive level, and yet the loss is hard to accept. Last month, when Skip tracked me down to tell me the news in person, he said quickly but as gently as possible, "It's your Dad...he's passed away." In the three or four weeks since then, those two short sentences have played through my mind a dozen or more times each day, despite my best efforts to not hear them again. Acceptance is hard. Thanksgiving was hard. Christmas is hard.
Gratitude helps to quiet those two sentences. I'm forever grateful to have parents who provided a loving home and had a successful marriage for 32 years. I'm grateful for summers spent playing outside and for winters spent playing board games. I am thankful for endless words of encouragement, motivation and reassurance. In recent years, my dad concluded many of our conversations with a recurrent message: Keep doing what you're doing.
I am thankful for pitch-perfect encouragement.
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