Feathers and Flowers

January always brings a mixture of emotions to the forefront of my heart. On the one hand I feel vibrant and energized by the joy of duck season, but on the other I feel solemn and somewhat weighty because of those who are no longer here to enjoy the duck season with me. It's been nearly thirteen years since my grandfather, Dan Beasley or “Da” as us grandkids called him, left this world and joined our Lord in heaven.

I will never forget the car ride home from school or the conversation where my mother told me we wouldn’t be seeing him anymore. I’ll never forget saying goodbye next to that hospital bed or the tears that stained the cheeks of all my family that was there. He left us too soon if you ask me, but the Lord is sovereign and has numbered all our days. Da was the first close family member I or any of my siblings ever lost. His death stung worse than anything I had felt before and even now that I am older and have experienced more loss his still stands out as a pivotal moment in my development as an outdoorsman, a young man, and as a Christian.

I wasn’t even thirteen years old at the time he died and there's so much I wish I could remember about him and the moments we shared. The things I do remember are his big thick mustache, his nasally country voice, his love for red tractors, all things hunting, and his family. He was gentle, kind, and well respected within the community. His visitation and funeral had so many people attend that you could barely expand your chest to take a breath inside the chapel. This, I have now come to learn, is not always the case when someone leaves this life.

I remember a family member speaking to my dad, myself, and my brother during the funeral and saying, “Dan had gunpowder in his blood and he gave that all to you.” That powder and love for the outdoors burned hot within my grandfather and it burns hot within my veins today. I can smell it any time my hands are cut by briars or my knuckles cracked from cold lake water. That smell of burning powder within my blood reminds me that I am still alive and a piece of my Da runs in me still.

Da was a farm boy growing up and didn’t develop a love for hunting until he married my grandmother, who to her dismay was surrounded by hunters on all sides of the family. She didn’t care too much about hunting or eating wild game and I am sure that early in their marriage she would occasionally voice complaints about my grandfather’s new found love for deer and duck hunting, but she was also the one who bought him a deer rifle for their first Christmas together and much later a Benelli Super Black Eagle shotgun for him to carry to the duck blind. Dad shoots deer with that rifle and I kill ducks with his Benelli still.

I wish that I would have gotten to hunt with Da more than I did. I remember plenty of deer hunts and days in the duck blind, but it is like I am seeing those memories through a fog that thickens over time. They seem far away, but I still hold them close. After Da passed, I found it very difficult to go out hunting anymore that season. I just didn’t feel any joy in it even as a child. I remember dad still venturing out and I wondered how he could even bring himself to go, but now I know that was a big part of his healing.

Another part of that healing, which would become standard practice during hunting season, would be to place duck feathers from our harvested birds on Da’s headstone. Dad would save feathers in a sandwich bag until it filled, then he would take us to the cemetery where we would poke them into the earth in honor of the man who gave us this love for hunting.

We have done this for years and I plan to make this a permanent practice. While I like to think that Da can see our gesture from his heavenly home and smile, I know that these feathers are really more for us who are still here. It is a simple, yet powerful reminder of the role he played in our lives. He loved us, taught us, and showed us how to be a God honoring man of faith. I miss him dearly and I eagerly wait to see him again.

While he might not be with us in the blind anymore, every January there will always be a beautiful and tasteful arrangement of feathers and flowers near his grave to tell the world that this man was a hunter and he left behind a legacy worth remembering.

I included some of my favorite old hunting pictures of Da below, most from well before my time, just in case you were wondering where my affinity for the hunt came from.

How do you honor those who have gone before you? I hope this will inspire you to tell their story.

I'll see you soon Da. I hope you've liked all the feathers.