A little before seven, my cell phone pinged.

And there was a text message.

Your father is under CPR.

Please pray.

And it was a neighbor in southern Utah where he lived.

And my wife and I were up giving, you know, getting my kids ready for school, making breakfast

and so forth. And I've had enough wilderness first responder training to know to grasp at that moment

that my father was probably passing away unexpectedly.

CPR in general, you know, for most injuries or other issues, whatever,

has about a 3% success rate, or that's what they taught when I went through the training I had.

And so I gathered the kids around and I kind of helped them understand that their grandfather was probably passing away at that moment. My wife and I decided to take

them into school and drop them off together. So our family was together because we both kind of anticipated

that that follow-up message could come through at any moment. Sure enough, about 20 or 30 minutes

later, and the paramedics had come and done what they could. And our friends had done everything they could until the paramedics arrived.

And well, we got that message that said he's passed.

We're so sorry.

And this morning we laid my father to rest.

It's been a wild week.

Folks, it was unexpected.

You know, my dad was fit as a fiddle.

He underwent a stroke about seven years ago, and that slowed him down a bit.

But even so, he was 81.

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