Murdock Robert (Bob) Maker, may he rest in peace

It will be the past

and we'll live there together

Not as it was to live

but as it is remembered.

It will be the past.

We'll all go back together.

Everyone we ever loved,

and lost, and must remember.

It will be the past.

And it will last forever.

My grandfather, Bob Maker, passed away last Sunday, October 9, 2011. He was a really wonderful (if occasionally grumpy) man and he will be missed. I mean who will we warn not to eat the popery at Christmas? ("It's not a cinnimon stick, Grandpa!")

The obituary that he wrote himself is pretty great if, as my mother said, a little exaggerated. :) You can read it in the St. Joseph News Press Gazette. His other obituary was published in the Lake Crystal Tribune, but they don't have a website for that up there in rural Minnesota. His funeral will be Sunday October 23rd at 3:30pm at Huffman United Methodist Church in St. Joseph, MO. I and Rev. Jacobs have the honor of officiating the service.

This is a great picture of my Grandpa and Grandma here in Austin (at Threadgill's) in 2006. It was his birthday...

...And this is my favorite picture of the Maker family because it's how I remember everyone from when I was a kid.

I fly home on Saturday and expect it to be a very fun, if weepy, time of celebration. That man had life, spunk and a little spit in him! What an amazing person my grandpa was...

(initial poem titled "Heaven" and written by Patrick Phillips)