About 70

 I am seventy years old. I am an old man. 

My grandfather often said, "I just want my three score and ten" and then he'd be ready to meet the Lord. referring to the passage in Psalm 90. This was when I was a kid and he was in his mid-sixties. So was it my grandfather or President Lincoln, who taught me what a "score" is. Close call. 

I never said this to my grandkids, not sure why. I have told them, as he often did, that "I'm an old model".

Anyway, last week I celebrated this day with my three children and my wife. No grandkids No in-laws No friends and neighbors. Just the little nuclear family that once was ours. It was wonderful. It was my Celebration of Life. That what birthdays are, celebrations of life. Gathering after a death are not, they are gatherings to do a proper mourning. 

There is a place in Minnesota where you should be someday. It is called the North Shore of Lake Superior. It was here, while asleep,  that I turned from 69 to 70. 

I don't know that I've had a better weekend. Certainly I've had many just as good but I am stumped to think of any that were better. We hiked Jay Cooke State Park, Gooseberry Falls State Park, Split Rock Lighthouse State Park and Tettegouche State Park. We went to mass together at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Two Harbors, MN. We ate doughnuts, drank a little bourbon, played card games, hiked, ran into friends from Stillwater, MN, watched football, picnicked, drank coffee on a porch a few feet from Lake Superior. Ate good food at nice local places. 

We listened to my bad rendition of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I opened wonderful gifts. I ate too much cake and ice cream, or perhaps not enough. 

As in years past we did this family trip all together in one vehicle. In a Ford F150 that seemed made for such a day. 

How did this happen? How is it that I came to be blessed in such a way? It is one of the mysteries of our lives. Some have years of visible hardship and suffering, as though suffering has a way of finding them, or those close. Others have it, in bundles, yet it is invisible. A few seem to make it through this world unscathed. Fortunate ones are tasked with walking beside those who suffer and being a rod and staff to comfort them. Perhaps I've been in each place a bit. 

So this young man who often showed alternating signs of promise and failure, accomplishment and regret, honor and wickedness finds himself standing on the edge. A 70 year old hand holds a billion year old stone. As I have every year of my life I makes ripples. In water and in lives. 

For the sake of your sorrowful passion O Lord, have mercy on me. 

The Zero Years, where I rippled for a time. 

Year 0 Johnson City Tennessee

Year 10 Pensacola Florida

Year 20 Bolivar Missouri

Year 30 Little Rock, Arkansas

Year 40 St. Louis, Missouri

Year 50 Eden Prairie Minnesota

Year 60 Victoria Minnesota. 

Year 70 Victoria Minnesota and the North Shore of Lake Superior. 

The blessings flow from our Lord.  Heal me. Hold me. Don't lose your grip on me, even when I try to shake loose. Walk with me to 80, or 70 1/2, or 93. Thank you Lord. Please don't let go. 

Did he know we were there?

 Do my blessed ancestors in heaven know us? Are they aware of what we are doing here? Prayers to these saints are heard, we know, but do they know anything else about us. Scripture hints that they do, but also hints that they don't. 

This month I walked through five cemeteries and stood at the graves of ancestors who lived and died in the hollows and highlands of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. Graves from the late 1700s to near present day. 

On Saturday September 5, 2026 I took my family to the grave of my Great great grandfather, Troy Jones and his wife, my Great great grandmother, Candace Pruitt Jones. Montezuma Cemetery in Montezuma, NC. I have a bed that he made in my home with a picture of him beside it. I did not know him, but knew his daughter, Clara Greene, my great grandmother. 

Around his grave this day were a great great grandson, three GGG grandchildren and five GGGG grandchildren, and three of their spouses. 9 direct descendants. Perhaps the most that ever stood at their grave at any one time, at least the most in a long time. She died in 1926, He died in 1923. I would like to think that a hundred years from now my descendants will visit my remains. Perhaps tell some funny story that has been passed down. Maybe my GGG granchildren will run on top of me and rattle my bones a bit as my grandchildren did on them. That would be nice. Thank you Troy and Candace. You are not forgotten.