Yearly Archives: 2009

Today, September 8, 2009 at around 11:40, my father, Calvin James Baker, passed on.  Passing from this life to the next was a thing of welcome for dad.

I have said to more than one person that I have had a great example in my father.  He loved his wife with a fierce loyalty, his children and their offspring with passion, his friends with devotion and His God with delight!

I will miss him.  In my elementary school days he was the one who played, in my teen years he was my support, in my early years of work and marriage he quietly advised, in my later years he became an equal for whom my respect was great. 

I pray you will have those type of models and examples in your lives!

My father is in the last stages of his life.  Last night I sat with him for a time, headed off to rest, and returned in the middle of the night, sat for some time, rested again and returned once again.  In one of those times between I also started work on some legal issues that will need to be addressed in dad’s will.

My ability to remain focused has been spread thin.  One thing leads to the next and you just follow the trail that is present. 

I had planned on talking about our trip to Montreal Lake in today’s post.  Just a short jotting to say that meeting with the people involved in the new church start at Montreal Lake/Timber Bay was exciting.  They have much going on.

But, having just arrived back in Kindersley, we are planning on heading down to LaFleche after morning church service tomorrow.  My father was in for medical tests this week and the doctor says he has cancer.  Dad is ninety, and does not plan on taking any treatments.  No real prognosis yet as to how long he will live.  We’ll visit with him, and I’ll work with my sister and my father on making sure all the legal issues are current and up-to-date.

So, quick in and quick out.  Life has a way of using the unexpected to increase our faith in God and to push us to rely on Him.

As I was speaking to a group this morning, I mentioned that my father homesteaded just “over by the bluff of trees.”  Afterwards one of the group said I was pointing the wrong way.  Instead, I needed to come up to his apartment and look out from their piazza (nice term for balcony).

Four floors up and a clear view of the surrounding fields.  We peered to the west, and there was the homestead.  Amazing how much one can enjoy a view for miles and miles and miles.  A field was ripening just below us.  Off to the north was Walmart peeking out of the ground.  To the south is our local park/dam. 

When you view the landscape from a height, you have to enjoy what you see!  This is truly a prairie scene, a land of the living sky!