I did not realize the mystical hold that the Blackfoot River had over my husband util I heard him eulogize his father a few summers ago. His dad loved Montana, his dad loved fishing, and he instilled those loves in his son. This is why we are in Montana this week. For the next three days my husband and boys will be on the fabled Blackfoot River. And as my husband said at his father’s memorial, “I like to think that’s where my dad is now, fishing on the Blackfoot”.
Something my husband said that sad day has stuck with me since. He described how we have to force, I mean encourage, our children to practice their piano. We have an hourglass filled with sand to mark their practice time. “When you first turn it over, it looks like it’s going to last forever. Then at the very end, the sand seems to rush out all at once. It’s then that you realize it was going that quickly the entire time, you just couldn’t see it.”
Though he may not know it, this trip is for him, and his sons, because time is rushing past, whether we can see it or not.
“Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them – we can love completely without complete understanding.” ~ Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
I am a guest of Paws Up this week for a media review, all expenses for my husband and children however are our own. It is worth every penny.