Reading the Susquehanna Covered Bridge historical marker together

Today is Father’s Day. The first one I will spend without my earthly father. No call today to hear that deep solemn yet cheerful voice and to find out the latest ins and outs of his life. Instead I will call my mother, brother, and sister and remember.

Earlier this week a friend shared a link on the web (click here for link) of a story from the daughter of Wendell Berry about growing up with a famous literary father. My dad wasn’t famous nor extremely literary but what struck me about the article was the quote of a paragraph from one of Berry’s novels – The Memory of Old Jack. When I read it I couldn’t help but think of my father. I share the paragraph here to honor him and all the fathers who have left to be with the Great Father.

In all their minds his voice lies beneath a silence. And in the hush of it they are aware of something that passed from them and now returns: his stubborn biding with them to the end, his keeping of faith with them who would live after him, and what perhaps none of them has yet thought to call his gentleness, his long gentleness toward them and toward this place where they are at work, they know that his memory holds them in common knowledge and common loss, the like of him will not soon live again in this world, and they will not forget him.

I miss you Eugene Holland, I miss ya, Pop!

Peace,

Kirk & Sarah