On October 3rd, the youngest of my three brothers died. Granted, he had had an aggressive kind of brain tumor removed in April, but he had pretty well recovered from that. Spent the week at the beach in June and collected some seventy sand dollars to take home with him. Then, in September, he was in pain and discovered that blood clots had moved to his lungs, but blood thinners caused the vessels in his head to bleed out and clot in the area where the tumor was removed. He was in the hospital for more than three weeks, passing his 70th birthday there (and my 57th...we were born on the same date thirteen years apart). Ultrasound showed numerous clots in his legs and then a urinary tract infection set in from the catheterization, and a sister and I held his hands as he stopped breathing.

He had six siblings, twelve nieces and nephews, eighteen grand-nieces and grand-nephews, and a few great-grands. His was a quiet presence in the town he grew up and lived in all of his life. He took on the farm after high school and Army service and, with our father's death in 1960, became half-owner with our mother. Then they bought 200 acres out the road, with juniper-laden old fields that we grubbed clean and eventually turned into hay and corn fields. He stopped farming in 1989, his knees aching from the day-in, day-out deep-knee bends necessary for milking cows in stanchions. Help was pretty scarce, also, as his nephews had gotten beyond the teen-age stage where they could be persuaded that working on a farm for the summer was "fun." After that, he worked on the town's road crew for several years. His wants were not many, though spending time in Florida during the winter became appealing...not having to load the wood-burning furnace several times a day being a great boon.

We celebrated our memories of him at the calling hours and the funeral and the luncheon following, bringing and finally finishing the 1500-piece puzzle he had been working on before he ended up in the hospital..

The minister of the church in the village had never met Phil, though he knew our two brothers, and he was warned that we were a "quiet family," not given to standing up and saying much. It turned out that I and one of the nieces spoke. Here's what I said:

Dear Phil,
I found the letter you wrote me in 2001. "P.S.," you wrote, "Write again soon. This is the first letter that I have gotten in many years." I think I responded. I hope I did, but only once, and then I forgot about how good it is to get a hand-written letter from someone far away. I'm sorry for that.

Last night I listened to our nieces and nephews talk about their times at the farm when they were kids: the load of hay on the big red truck that came unstacked and slid off with them riding the small round bales down to the ground, the chickens that one niece didn't want to watch you kill for Sunday dinners, picking rock from the fields up on the hill, sliding down the pile of sawdust as you were shoveling the truck full.

I think of the tons of work you put into clearing the fields on top of the hill, the fields of corn we planted with that two-row, ancient corn planter, the heifers we went chasing after in a hundred-fifty-acre pasture, the calving cows we'd end up searching and searching for in the woods when they didn't come home with the rest of the milk cows, the buckets of sap carried from the trees to the gathering tank, sometimes through deep snow, sometimes in the mud, my kids helping when they were old enough.

You practiced such patience.

After I married and moved away, going down to the farm for a weekend was my touchstone. Goodness knows, there was always work to do, but there were summer evenings resting on the porch as dark settled in and the cutting of hay safe in the barn and the milking done, when whip-poor-wills would sit on the fence and call and call and call as the air cooled down from the hot day.

The front door was never locked.

Now you've unlocked a new door.

I don't know what your thoughts were about souls -- whether you have one and where it might go once shed of its physical home. I happen to think we have souls and that yours has found a peaceful place.

For you I sing the song "By My Side" from "Godspell":

Where are you going?
Where are you going
Will you take me with you?
For my hand is cold and needs warmth. Where are you going?

Far beyond where the horizon lies,
where the horizon lies, and the land sinks into mellow blueness.

Let me skip the road with you; I can dare myself, I can dare myself.
I'll put a pebble in my shoe and watch me, watch me walk,
I can walk and walk.
I shall call the pebble dare, and we will talk about walking.
Dare shall be carried and when we both have had enough,
I will take him from my shoe, singing meet your new road.
Then I'll take your hand, finally glad that you are here by my side.

Phil, you've taken a new road far beyond where the horizon lies. Maybe you've found a fascinating shore filled with sand dollars of an ethereal nature, maybe there's a tang of zucchini relish and a waft of maple-scented steam. Maybe not. We won't know until we get there.

May it be for you a peaceful journey of joy.

Two days later in misty rain, eighteen of us gathered at the farm and two pickups loaded with folks went to the top of the field that Phil had gazed on for 60 years whenever he sat on the porch. Each one took a portion of his ashes and, with our backs to the wind, cried "Good-by, Phil" as we let them fly free.

So passed the first of my generation.

---

Letter to the Author:

Cherie Staples at skyearth1@aol.com

---

Table of Contents