In Memory of Dan S. Barker

This morning one of my best friends, Amy Barker, lost her father to brain cancer. While we remember that he is no longer in pain and suffering here on earth, it is the family that will have an extremely hard journey ahead. Please keep Amy and her mother, Debbie, in your prayers, along with the rest of the Barker family.

Dan was a beloved husband, father, brother, son, grandfather, uncle, cousin and friend to so many. An exceptional Aggie who was a mentor, and leader by nature. The passage I am about to end with has been read at all of my grandparents' funerals, and brings me peace - and I hope it does the same for the Barkers, as well as anyone else who may need the uplifting words.

"Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well." - From the book September, by Rosamunde Pilcher

Gig 'em Dan! We will be missing, thinking and praying for you and your family.

Sad tonight,

RAWE