How Can Uncle Harold Be Gone?
Some people give the impression they will live forever, and my husband’s Uncle Harold Walker was one of them. So when the news arrived on Wednesday that he died of a stroke last weekend, we could hardly believe it.
Not Uncle Harold…
who climbed up and down the mountains in the Idaho panhandle as a boy,
who trained to try out for the Olympic track team in the 1940s,
who as a WW2 pilot saw the Enola Gay take off with an atom bomb in the cargo bay,
who gave the silk parachute that saved his life to his fiance for her wedding dress,
who loved his wife, children, and grandchildren beyond measure,
who, with his bride, spent a year homesteading in Alaska,
who gave selflessly to the students he taught in school and guided in youth groups,
who coached countless youth in basketball and football,
who loved to hike, bow fish, and hunt,
who earned a doctorate in administration,
who served as a church administrator and school superintendent for decades,
who logged in the Idaho woods well into his 70s,
who created, along with his wife and children, a family camp on a mountainside,
who wrote books about his long and storied life,
who helped coach his granddaughter’s basketball team just last year,
and whose life was a testimony of what it means to love God and others.
How can he be dead? This precious man…
who touched our lives by welcoming us into his family circle,
who made us feel as if we’d always been part of it,
who welcomed us, with his wife, into their home last March,
who took us to lunch at Red Lobster, his favorite restaurant,
who a few weeks ago sent an email describing corn harvest during his childhood,
whose bright eyes and smile in the last photo we have of him now move me to tears.
How can we not simultaneously…
weep for our loss,
rejoice to have known him,
thank God for his swift departure,
and imagine with joy his reunion with the Savior he loved so dearly?
