I just looked at a photo of Page's family from a couple autumns ago. I was the one who took the picture. It was of her, her three brothers, and her parents in the stadium parking lot before a Va. Tech football game. They were all dressed in the Hokie colors, arms around each other's shoulders, smiling. Her Dad was smiling most of all, there with his family and his team.

Life changes. Goodbyes are said that were neither anticipated nor desired. New photos will be made, but some of the faces will be gone. In this case, I am thinking of Page's Dad, T.G.

He was a nice fellow, kind of a self-made man, a football player at Va. Tech back when it was called VPI, a lifelong administrator with a phone company that eventually became part of Verizon.  He was a golfer, an outdoorsman, a husband, a father, a churchman. He was to me a kind and very welcoming father-in-law. He will be missed.

In early Old Testament days, pre-Daniel Hebrews believed that we live on after death through our progeny. We create new lives and visit our influence and values upon them. Then those influences and values (i.e., the essence of our lives) live on through them, and later through the ones to whom they passed all that along, and on and on and on it continues. After the time of the book of Daniel, and on through the New Testament and into the present day, we have had a more developed sense of a personal After Life. Still, those long-ago Hebrews were onto something. Whatever we are in this life does continue after us via the impact we had on others. What we did, believed, and stood for lives on. The lessons we taught (for better or worse) were observed and learned by someone, and those lessons continue long after we are gone.

Two of Page's brothers spoke at the Memorial Service, each doing a lovely and loving job. And each spoke of their father's devotion to family and his belief in God. At the end of the day, those are good lessons to teach, valuable influences to leave behind.

It all made me wonder what lessons I am teaching, what values I am imparting, while I am still here... and also reminded me that if I am not teaching the right lessons, thank God I still have a chance to change that and do so. So do you. If you are reading this, then you are alive. And, if you are alive, then you are having an impact on someone. It is critical that we teach the right lessons because they truly are like the ripples in a pond, extending exponentially into the waters of the future.

T.G.'s remains were placed in a beautiful outdoor Memorial Garden at a Methodist Church he used to attend. It sits atop a windswept hill, looking off across a green Virginia landscape.  Fittingly, it's not far from the river he loved, and not far from the campus of Va. Tech. His soul we commended to an even fairer Place where death shall be no more. And now, the family will remember and incorporate into their own lives the lessons he left behind.

Though I am a Dukie, as you well know, out of love to a good man who welcomed me into his family, this is for you, T.G.:  "Go, Hokies!"