Well, we spent some time down at the local cemetery reading headstones today. This was one of the first times we have been able to go down and see them when the a lot of the kids could read them for themselves. They were fascinated with the dates and names, figuring out relationships and kinships between the stones.

I also shared with them the news of the day, my Grandfather, Edward Garrett Burningham, known by most as Ted, departed this sphere of influence as a soul of flesh and spirit. They took it like good, sweet children, sorry to hear such news, but pretty sure that everything was alright and things were just proceeding according to the way things just are.

He's been ailing for quite a few months now, and in the past week has been feeling especially in need of relief from this veil of tears. His wife and my grandmother, Blanche, died more than five years ago, and he has been missing her and his old level of energy much. He was a very busy and handy man. The steady loss of his strength and ability to do things for and by himself has been a very hard thing for him to take.

He lived almost all of his life in Bountiful, Utah, except for the brief but I am sure for him, too lengthy seasons during World War ll. He spent time as a long-haul truck driver in the forties and fifties, as a fireman and firechief in Bountiful during the fifties and sixties, and as a sheet metal fabricator into the eighties and nineties. He was always busy, mowing his lawn early in the morning, aiding those in need of pretty much anything, and working in his garden at all hours possible during the growing season, next to the house where he was born and grew up in Bountiful where my aunt and uncle live now.

He survived all his brothers and sisters, each living a good life, but my grandfather seemed to have benefited from some extreme stubbornness of will, clean and industrious lifestyle and some fortunate heart medicine and surgery in very recent years.

He was a excellent example to all who knew him, a thrifty and responsible man, always taking care of that which was under his husbandry and much more. His eight children are each in their own way tributes to his ways, and each are very much like him, again, in their own way.

He passed on today, after a long and productive life. May his increase be eternal, and his blessings just the same.