My father passed away peacefully in his sleep Wednesday night, 8/12/2020. This was very sudden and unexpected, but we are mobilizing to honor his memory as best as we can. I wish I could give him the eulogy he deserves, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will prevent a funeral gathering larger than his immediate family. If he ever made you laugh, if you ever enjoyed his bold and profound poetry, if you loved him the way he made it his mission to love all of God's people, you would have been welcome to celebrate his life with us at his funeral. Instead, I can only ask you to contribute to the effort to get his affairs in order and give him a proper send-off. The cremation will cost $3,000 (he would have preferred to be buried, but money is tight), and the rest will go to various other expenses such as travel, paperwork, missed wages, and clearing out his apartment. Hours before he passed, he told his sister about his plans for next summer. He was really looking forward to welcoming his first granddaughter into the world next month, getting his driver's license, and moving back to the rugged hills of New England where his heart never left. It kills me that he will never get to do these things, that I can't do them with him, but the fact that he passed with his heart full of hope and free of regrets is comforting beyond words. He was a thoughtful writer, a dutiful worker, a music lover, a craft beer drinker, a connoisseur of fried clams, a pious Christian, a dauntless underdog, a human being, and my only father. If there's a heaven, he's there with his mother. May they both rest in peace. -James C Ford