Frabjous Times

I’m just about to head up to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts to be with my wife's family as they prepare to bury my father-in-law, George Finn, aged 72.

George was a man of strong personality and strong opinions, sometimes curmudgeonly, staunchly liberal, idealistic, given to the dramatic, true defender of his family. The only male in a household of five (also strong-willed) females, he occasionally seemed less than totally sure of what he was expected to do, but he lived his role in full happiness if not to say serenity. Alone among his three siblings from a middle class upbringing in central Massachusetts, he was passionate about the higher reaches of intellectual activity while always seeming to project an image of being down-to-earth about what was right and what was wrong.

In one of those ironies, this man who had always hated visiting his doctor spent much of his last few years in the almost constant care of doctors, nurses, and therapists. Physical limitations darkened his air of melancholy perhaps, but mentally he was still on top of things. He and his wife Virginia loved their home in the Berkshire hills where he now to be laid to rest, where they could find comfort in the countryside and pleasure in the artistic activities around them.