May 2026
Dear Craig,
It’s been a while since I’ve written to you here. Too long, really. I find myself needing to tell you about this year, at least thus far. It’s been one of the hardest I can remember, Craig. And yet, somehow, as I write this, God’s presence is shining in my heart through all the darkness.
I want to tell you about that. I want to tell you what this year has taken from me, and what I’ve found that can’t be taken.
The Soundtrack Goes Quiet
The year began with a loss that might seem strange to grieve so deeply – the passing of a man I met only once, and briefly, in person, but who wrote and played the soundtrack to my life.
Bob Weir died on January 10th, he was only 78 years old, a founding member of the Grateful Dead, and for over half a century, his voice and his guitar shaped the music that has accompanied me through every season of my life. “Sugar Magnolia.” “Truckin’.” “Playing in the Band.” “Cassidy.” These weren’t just songs to me, Craig – they were markers on the road, companions on the journey, the background music to moments of joy, time with close and long friends and sorrow alike.
If you’ve never understood what the Dead means to their fans, more likely you never heard of the Grateful Dead, but bear with me as I try to explain it this way: the Grateful Dead created something that was always changing, always improvising, never the same twice. Every concert was different. Every performance was a conversation between the musicians and the moment. Bob Weir once said he was a “compulsive music maker,” and that compulsion created something rare – music that grew with you, that met you wherever you were in life. True improvisation, where the sum of the parts was greater than any ONE band member.
There’s a line from “Truckin'” that I’ve carried with me for decades: “What a long strange trip it’s been.” Bob Weir sang those words, and they’ve echoed through my life in ways I couldn’t have predicted when I first heard them as a young man. This year, more than any other, I’ve understood what a strange trip it truly is – how life takes turns we never expect, how the road bends through valleys we didn’t see coming. The music selection I chose for this blog post is one that most casual fans miss, the Grateful Dead in early 1970 performing A Voice from on High, acoustic.
When Bob died, something in me understood that a chapter was closing. The music lives on – it always will – but the man who helped create it, who kept it alive for sixty years, who played those songs at Golden Gate Park just months before his death… he’s gone now. And I felt it.
Losing My Shepherd
But Craig, as hard as losing Bob Weir was, it was just the beginning of a year of loss.
In April, Pastor Fred Vann passed away.
I need you to understand what Pastor Fred meant to me. This wasn’t just a man who led a church I attended. Pastor Fred was literally the hands and feet of Jesus in my spiritual rebirth. When I found my way back to faith, when I opened my heart to Christ again after years of wandering, Pastor Fred was there. He walked with me. He prayed with me. He showed me what it looks like to live out your faith, not in grand gestures, but in the daily, consistent, humble work of loving others.
There are people who talk about Jesus, and there are people who show you Jesus. Pastor Fred showed me. In his kindness, in his patience, in the way he shepherded his flock through their darkest moments and their brightest celebrations – he embodied the Gospel in a way that made it real to me.
His loss hit me hard, Craig. Harder than I expected, even though I knew his health had been failing. When someone has been instrumental in your spiritual journey, when they’ve been present at the moment of your rebirth, losing them feels like losing a piece of that sacred story. I found myself asking: How do you say goodbye to someone who helped save your soul?
The answer, I’ve learned, is that you don’t really say goodbye. You carry them with you. You honor them by living out what they taught you. Pastor Fred’s hands and feet may be still now, but the love of Christ that he showed me? That lives on in how I try to treat others, in the faith I’m trying to share with you through these letters, in every moment I choose grace over judgment, patience over frustration, love over indifference.
Watching Family Struggle
And then there’s been Aunt Judy. As you know, she suffered a series of strokes this year. Watching someone you love go through that – watching their body betray them, watching them fight to recover what they’ve lost – it’s its own kind of grief. It’s grief for what might be, grief for the changes that can’t be undone, grief mixed with hope and fear in equal measure. I am not sure your Mom ever told you but I am dyslexic, have been since birth, I could not even read till the late 4th grade, I overcame the impacts of Dyslexia with the help of Aunt Judy. Aunt Judy was an elementary school teacher in Cumberland, RI and she took an entire summer, when she should have been on vacation to help me, the LOVE of Family.
Your grandparents, too, continue to face serious health challenges. I won’t go into all the details here, but I need you to know that this year has been heavy with worry for the people I love most. When you’re in your later fifties, you start to understand something that you can’t fully grasp when you’re younger: you’re watching your parents age. You’re seeing the people who once seemed invincible begin to struggle. It’s the natural order of things but knowing that doesn’t make it easier.
Add to all of this a rough busy season, and you have a picture of what this year has looked like from the outside. Loss upon loss. Challenge upon challenge. The kind of year that makes you wonder how much one heart can hold.
But Here’s What I Need You to Know
Craig, if this letter ended here, it would be incomplete. Worse than that – it would be untrue. Because here’s the thing about this year that I most want you to understand:
God’s presence has been shining through all of it.
Not in spite of the darkness, but in it. Not waiting on the other side of the valley but walking with me through it. This is what I want to teach you about faith, son – not that following Christ protects you from suffering, but that it gives you something to hold onto when suffering comes.
And it will come. It comes for everyone.
Psalm 23 says “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” I used to read that as a promise of protection – that God would keep the valley away. I understand it differently now. The promise isn’t that we won’t walk through dark valleys. The promise is that we won’t walk through them alone. Secondly, Pastor Fred taught me to read the bible both directly and indirectly, for example, the verse states “walk-thru” the valley of the shadow of death, not camp out and hang there – keep walking……..
This year, I’ve felt that presence more clearly than ever. In the grief over Bob Weir echoes of his music reminding me that the strange trip continues, that meaning can be found even in loss. In mourning Pastor Fred, I felt the faith he helped kindle in me burning brighter, not dimmer – as if his passing was a commission to carry forward what he’d planted. In worrying about Aunt Judy and your grandparents, I’ve learned to pray more honestly, to surrender more completely, to trust that God holds them even when I can’t.
And in the exhaustion of a very long 4+ months, I’ve found grace I didn’t earn – the strength to get through one more day, then one more, then one more after that.
A New Beginning
In the midst of all this, I moved into our new home in a place about 1 mile from where I grew up. A fresh start of sorts, a new chapter even as other chapters were closing.
There’s something fitting about that, I think. Life doesn’t wait for us to finish grieving before it asks us to keep living. It hands us boxes to unpack while we’re still processing loss. It asks us to make a house a home while our hearts are still healing. And maybe that’s a mercy. Maybe the work of creating something new is part of how we honor what we’ve lost – by choosing to keep going, by believing the story isn’t over.
It’s possible to hold grief and gratitude at the same time, Craig. It’s possible to miss the people you’ve lost while also being thankful for the people who are still here. It’s possible to acknowledge that a year has been brutal and also to find light breaking through. A MIDDLE ground if you will.
What I Want You to Carry
So here’s what I want you to take from this letter, son. Here’s the wisdom – if you can call it that – from a father who’s walked through a hard year and come out the other side still standing:
Loss is part of life, but it’s not the whole story. You will lose people you love. You will lose pieces of yourself in those losses. But if you let it, grief can deepen you instead of destroying you. It can make you more compassionate, more present, more grateful for what remains.
Faith isn’t about avoiding the darkness – it’s about knowing who walks with you through it. I don’t understand why God allows suffering. I doubt I ever will, this side of eternity. But I know that when I’ve reached for Him in the darkest moments, He’s been there. Not always in ways I expected. Not always with the answers I wanted. But present. Faithful. A light in the valley.
The people who shape us never fully leave us. Bob Weir lives on in the music that still plays in my heart. Pastor Fred lives on in the faith he helped nurture. The love of family, even when they’re struggling, even when we’re worried sick about them – that love is a thread that connects us across distance and time and even death.
And life keeps inviting us forward. Into new homes. New seasons. New chances to love and be loved. This year asked a lot of me. But it also gave me things I didn’t expect – a new home, time with Neusa in a beautiful place, deeper faith, a clearer sense of what matters.
The Long Strange Trip Continues
What a long strange trip it’s been, Craig. What a long strange trip it continues to be.
I think of you often – more than you probably know. I think about the man you’re becoming, the life you’re building, the joys and struggles that are uniquely yours. I wish I could protect you from the hard years that will inevitably come. I can’t. No father can. But I can tell you what I’ve learned: that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. That’s not just a Bible verse to me anymore. It’s what I’ve lived this year.
I’m sending you my love. I’m sending you my prayers. And I’m sending you this truth that I’ve learned the hard way, and that I hope you’ll remember when your own dark valleys come:
God is with you. In the grief and the gratitude. In the loss and the new beginnings. In the silence where music used to play and in the songs that still ring out. He is with you, and He is with me, and somehow – mysteriously, graciously – that is enough.
I love you, Craig. Always have. Always will.
Dad
