I just took this picture from the sitting room of our house. There’s a lot of my family represented here.
First, there’s my wife’s aesthetic. If it were up to me, I’d leave the books bold and beautiful, standing alone on the shelf. But she can’t help herself—she has to add knickknacks. So here they are: photos of our children and grandchildren, a doll in a bright dress, an old art project from one of our kids in first grade. A life, layered.
Less obvious is the shelf itself. Her father built it by hand when we were engaged in 1990. He made three of them for us. We filled them—and then some—over the years. These shelves have followed us through more than a dozen moves. Her dad lived with us for most of the final five years of his life. He’s been gone a year now, but the things he made are still here, still holding us up.
But I want to talk about the books.
This is the 24th printing of Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World, a 54-volume set with three introductory volumes. Volumes 4 through 54 are the works themselves. Despite all our moves, the set is still in excellent shape.
In 1982, my parents purchased the full Britannica Encyclopedias, along with this set of the Great Books. If you look closely, you’ll see the final matching volume labeled “1983.” That was intended as the beginning of an ongoing supplement. Britannica sent it out the next year, but since my parents didn’t subscribe to the continuation series, that single addendum is all we have.
When my dad retired, he asked me to be executor of his will. In it, he noted that his newest car should go to my older sister. To me, the oldest son, he offered his second car—whatever that might be, someday.
I told him, “Dad, thanks, but I don’t want your second car. I don’t want whatever beat-up Oldsmobile with 180,000 miles on it when God calls you home. I want something that will last.”
He paused. “What would you like?”
“Books,” I said. “Your books.”
It was important to me to hold in my hands something that he had held. I now have several of his books, but the two that mean the most are his Bible—he was a pastor—and The Great Books.
“You don’t need to wait for those,” he said, and gave them to me right then.
I’ve had them ever since. And I intend to keep them until it’s my time.
Dad and I read these books together. I had five siblings, and I’m sure they read from the set too, but he and I had a special bond over them. He’d read Aquinas while I read Locke. We’d talk about what we read while splitting firewood. Then we’d trade, reading the same books again, but this time through the lens of each other’s thoughts.
I was much younger, and my insights were surely immature—but he listened anyway.
I don’t think he read them all. Some didn’t interest him. Freud, for instance, just annoyed him.
But I read them all. Every single one. Between the ages of 16 and 21, when my mind was sharper and faster than it is now.
And yet, I think it’s time to read them again. Slowly this time. At my own pace. With the benefit of years—of being older now than he was when we first read them together.
Dad passed away in 2021, on my couch. I was there. One moment he was talking, and the next he was gone. No pain, no struggle. Just… gone.
He was a good man. Like all good men, he was still a sinner. And the wages of sin is death. It’s coming for us all—unavoidable, inescapable. But now I know that God can be gentle when receiving a gentle man.
Later, when I wrote about the death of Ray’s parents in my novel Transmigrant, I used the same moment: There one minute. Gone the next.
But he’s not really gone.
I’ll see him again.
Transmigrant, a survival thriller in a science fiction setting, can be found on Amazon and Audible.
As of the time of this writing, I still have some free Audible credits left (US and UK) available in exchange for fair reviews.