Last Words

Anniversary week continues.  Tuesday was our 42nd wedding anniversary.  Today marks another anniversary.  On this date, five years ago, I got the phone call. 

It's hard to believe that five years have passed since Daddy died.  On that Saturday morning, life was normal.  And then it wasn't.

Brandon, Stephanie, and AJ were here for the weekend.  We were making plans for our day.  Then the phone rang and all our plans were changed.  And the hardest part of it all was that I didn't get to say goodbye. 

If Daddy and I could have had one final conversation, I wonder what he might have said.  If you knew you were leaving this world, what would you say to those you love most? 

We didn't get to have that conversation.  And so I remember previous conversations we had.

He often would say He that tooteth not his own horn heareth not the sound thereof.  He always said that with a twinkle in his eye!

When talking about money, he would say things like You need to diminish your wants or augment your means.  Or he would say You're old enough for your wants not to hurt you.

He said things like Top 'o the mornin' to ya! and Can't never could!

He loved to talk about baseball and poetry and politics.  And he loved to tell jokes.  Oh, how he loved to tell jokes!

When I got to Daddy's house on that Saturday afternoon after "the phone call", I found his Bible and devotional book open to the passage he had read the previous morning, before the heart attack took his life.

There's a sense in which these are Daddy's final words to me.  And to my brother.  Because, in his own words, I believe this is what Daddy would have said to us if he had known he was leaving that day.  This is how he lived, and this is how he wanted us to live too.

"If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.  Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."  (Colossians 3:1-3 KJV)