Stephen Lane Wood

Today would have been his birthday.
Except that yesterday he decided that the other side was a better place to be.
A mere 24 hours shy of his 85th birthday.
He is my mother's older brother.
And I seem to be taking his passing a little hard.
I don't understand completely why.
I know he has been reunited with his beloved wife.
I know that he is free from the burden of his failing body.
He probably has had a joyous reunion with so many of the people whose temple work he completed.

But it's still hard.
He has been interwoven firmly into the fabric of my life.
And now a piece of that fabric has been torn.
He was just always there.
A leisurely stroll down the street from my mom's house.
On the hilly "tree" streets of Provo, Utah.

I don't feel that I was particularly close to him.
Except that he was just always there.
Every year when we made the annual trek to Utah, the "mother land."
As a girl growing up.

He was instrumental in my parent's meeting.
He was a world famous expert on bark beetles.
If your line of work happens to be bark beetles.
But that was an important work to many throughout the world.

I had gotten closer to him in the last ten years.
As he gave me some family history "assignments."
And awakened within me a passion for family history work.
He was the cheerleader when I found some tidbit of information.
And gave counsel when I was stuck, referring to his copious geneology notes
Written in a tiny scrawled hand in numerous notebooks.

Maybe I'm sad because his generation is passing on.
And the realization has hit that the torch is being passed to my generation.
I hope I can live up to it.

Please excuse me from blogging for a few days.
While I mourn in my own way.
And spend time with my family in Utah.
Learning what I need to know to keep the torch burning for the next generation.