Turning into Dad

Sad news came this week from a close cousin, informing me of the quiet passing of a favorite family member. Four sons were raised under the watchful eye (Proverbs 4:1) of our Uncle Bill, a man my sister and I knew as a soft-spoken, kind, thoughtful and hospitable southern gentleman. In the latter stages of life, Bill suffered the many indignities of Alzheimer’s, robbing those who knew him best of the things for which we had grown to love him most (Jeremiah 33:6). With fondness, we reminisced about the good times we shared with our closest cousins, now almost forty-plus years removed… summer visits to Grandma’s little white house, delicious meals prepared by her two daughters (many of which we devoured while seated at the “kids” table), long hours spent mimicking the Beatles in the basement and road trips in the station wagon on Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Time passes with tremendous societal change, yet the simplest joys at the core of our collective memory are cherished. As men, we see the resemblance to our own fathers manifested in small, subtle ways, but in celebrating Bill’s life, we pause to treasure the high and finer things of our fathers (Psalm 25:4), while laying aside any bad. As for me, of all that I might still become, I could do a whole lot worse… than turning into Dad.