It’s been a year. Dad died on Friday the 13th of June, 2025 in the wee hours of the morning, after succumbing to complications from pulmonary fibrosis aggravated by both colon and prostate cancers. He was an avid reader and antiquarian book collector. He never met anything he didn’t want to collect, but he couldn’t live without books. My brother Ken and I hope heaven has a big library since he couldn’t take any of them with him. Dad’s brother Greg, also a collector but who has more of a book salesman approach to managing the accumulation, is helping sell the books and getting them to “all the right targets,” as Dad so famously desired. A book in the right hands is indeed able to change the world.
Heavenly Tanka
today marks one year
that we haven’t had you here
(are there books up there??)
more important: are there dogs?
most important: Mom is there…..
Common Threads 
Sending you a distant hug today. My father loved books, too. He always had a book and a pencil nearby. It seemed he was always researching something. In his final years, it was astrophysics and he would bore us with his knowledge. One of the biggest things I grieved about him was the loss of his intelligence. I’ve had to work through the feeling that I disappointed him. He never said it, so I’m sure it isn’t true. Oh, the burdens we give ourselves.
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I can hear you loudly and clearly with the loss of that intelligence in our fathers. I love that our dads both loved books and took great knowledge from them. We are blessed that way. I was looking back at your Pacific Coast pictures and I have absolutely fallen in love with the idea of the poetry walk along a path. We have one here, and I’ve been thinking about what I could do when I retire to leave something of my fingerprint on the education and community, and the Pirate Path might need a few poems like these. Thank you so much for sharing that idea. I am wondering if our maintenance department could make a few signs and print them on there. I’m looking at the poems chosen for the walk that you took. I still have Dad’s 8th grade Georgia Literature book from when he was in middle school and there are so many Georgia poets that this would be a great way to blend some older and newer ones from here – – including a few lines of a story from the Pike County resident who died when the Titanic sunk. You really have inspired me to think about a way to make this same thing happen here. So thanks!!
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You should go for it! It would cost some real money but is certainly a worthy project that you could sink your teeth into.
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Kim,
I know this has to be a hard day for you. I know this past year has had its challenges as you deal w/ your father’s estate. I know having your pups and these family photos bring comfort. Sending you lots of love and light today. And I do love that photo of your father w/ his dog.
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Thank you so much, Glenda! The story of Kona is a sweet one, with layers of our late mother there in the story when the man who chose us to receive Kona (we kept that name) met us halfway (4 hours ish) between his home in Florida and ours in middle Georgia to give her to us. He stepped out of his truck wearing a Florida State University t-shirt, tears streaming down his face as he was going through a divorce and could no longer keep the dog, and unable to say a word – – just handed her to me with a grief I will never forget. When I saw the shirt, I knew. Nobody on the face of this planet walks into a Schnoodle without it costing them a dime, a gift of pure love and sacrifice from the owner to the new family, but by divine intervention. That was my mother’s way of assuring me that she’d had a hand in finding peace in the hardship of someone’s divorce to bring a puppy who needed a good home to a man who needed a dog – – my dad. And the bond they had was unbelievable. That dog knew him and would get close to him and be still when she saw him in distress, as he was so much in his final days. It broke my heart that he chose a family from the dog park to keep her when he knew his days were coming to an end, but he wanted her to continue to be with the people and dogs she knew every day in that dog park. And she still goes there, every day. Thanks so much for reading and always encouraging me.
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Kim, please accept a big hug on a hard anniversary. I am sure that the saver your dad was is thrilled that you are doing the hard work of saving photos and memories. Your 1960 picture is priceless and the tale of talking to his dog brings me to tears. May your find peace in your memories.
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Thank you, Anita! I appreciate the hug! Yes, the saver of all things that he was appreciates, I’m sure, the photos and stories. As I go through the tubs and tubs of photos, one thing I’m noticing is how much he looked like several of my grandchildren at different points of his life. Or perhaps it’s better to say how much they look like him, since he came first. Especially the boys, one in particular who got more of a dose of Haynes traits than the others, it seems, from my son’s children, and then both of my daughter’s sons have a lot of Haynes in them too that is quite visible. I know one has his love of reading, and I hope the others get it too. And, of course, they all love dogs, so that part of the DNA is strong.
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