My Dad's Passing, One Year Later

On this one year anniversary of his fall (he died three days later), a brief look back:

The final unpublished photo (appropriately, at the cemetery, with his gaze on the place where he would come to rest):

Picking up sticks at cemetery (8/20/16).  

Dad planted the red oak in this photo.

Another view (8/20/16), with mother's  

grave decorated by my cousin, who

was visiting.

Final photo I have (9/10/16).  

Inside church with organ he 

loved.

At village green bandstand 

(9/10/16).

It is amazing how good Dad looked in his final days.  Despite having turned 90, he took no medications, and was still mentally invested (we visited all the village's churches—some weren’t open—on 9.10.16); what a life well lived!

There was one final puzzle to Dad’s last days, and that was his insistence that nothing be made of his 90th birthday.  For someone who enjoyed well-done pageantry and ceremony, his aversion to the spotlight was remarkable.  A possible explanation is that he often cited the example of his great-grandfather, J.K., who settled here in the late 1830s.  Apparently, at J.K.’s 90th birthday party in 1914, the guests had all gathered at the old house to honor a man of some stature.  But where was that man?  At some point someone espied a figure making his way, on foot, through the fields, and not looking back.  

Jared 

P.S.: And, finally, in a tribute to his master, Pip, our family’s beloved presence, held out through the heat of summer, living exclusively outside (refusing to cross the threshold into the kitchen), in order to pass away in time for Dad’s one year anniversary.  Pip was a full 13 and a half years old when he died (in human terms, 94, going on 95).

Final unpublished photo, 7/15/17.