My wife wrote this eulogy for her grandfather, Kensinger Jones. She read it at his memorial service last month.

Since the service, people who knew and loved Ken have been asking for a copy (including me).

I think it’s lovely.

(I don’t have a photo of Keeley and Ken together, but above you can see her in all her glory at Aurohn Lake — one of the many gifts he gave to us all.)

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Grandpa was a lot of things.

He was Grandpa, he was a conservationist, a farmer, a boy scout, an ad-man, a teacher, a father, a husband, a faithful friend to so many, and of course, a writer.

He liked writing poems. He liked poems that rhymed. He would write an original poem every year for my birthday card and every year for Christmas cards (and Grandma helped too, I know).

He wrote much more, of course. Books and radio plays and essays and articles…

Writing has life. Everything written is a creation. Every letter is a seed that has been planted in a row.

Everything about Grandpa was full of life. His personality, his writing, and his land. He planted trees, he planted flowers, he planted memories in that land. He wrote some of the best chapters of my childhood.

Knowing that the place where he walked, where he worked, where he wrote… The place that he looked out across every day and said the blessing “Lord we thank you for this day, we thank you for the beauty that surround us…”

Knowing that that place will be preserved and protected… It’s as if we know our childhood will be protected, too. And what kinder gift, what better story, could ever possibly be written?

Every blade of grass is a noun
every flower is an adjective
every field is a paragraph
every tree is a line of poetry

And people will be reading the story of the land, as Grandpa and Grandma wrote it together, for generations to come.

Keeley Geary
March 10, 2015