It was just a little after 9:00 am Sunday morning, October 3, 2021. The cloudless, clear, cool morning was majestic -- no wind, not even a breeze. My quiet meditation was slowly interrupted when some yahoo in a backcountry Cessna did a low pass over the reservoir directly in front of my cabin. I heard the plane turn around and watched it fly by again, well under the 1000 ft altitude minimum. As the sounds of the airplane faded in the distance, I returned to thinking about my cousin, John, who was spending the last days of his life at his cabin, a mile or upstream from Mack’s Inn. The Hospice nurses told John’s family that he would not last very long. As far as I knew at that moment, he was still alive. John had been a fighter pilot and I remember thinking to myself that he would love a low pass fly-by of Island Park on his way out. I imagined him sitting in the right seat, quietly enjoying the ride. John’s son, Michael, called at 9:35 am to tell me that he had just learned that his father had passed away early that morning. I was the first person he called. John was the oldest male cousin among the children of the identical twin doctors, Aldon and Asael, who ran the Tall Clinic in Rigby for over 50 years -- I am the youngest. On the other hand, my sister, Marilyn is the oldest cousin. We all grew up with rich childhood memories of coming to our cabins near Mack’s Inn each summer. At 9:40 am I could not reach Marilyn but found my brother, Bruce, and while talking with him, at 9:48 am, an email arrived from Marilyn, reminding us that it was October 3rd, our father’s birthday, which I calculated to be 115 years ago. I realized that while I had been trying to reach her, she had been writing an email to us. I again called Marilyn to tell her of John’s passing, a more immediate issue. This time her son-in-law answered, “Marilyn’s phone.” I told him the story and he brought the phone to Marilyn. She could tell from the somber look on his face that there was news of a family member passing. Before giving the phone to her, he whispered to her that John had passed. She said, with some relief, “Oh good, I thought it was Bruce.” She was immediately overwhelmed that on the memorialized birthday of our fathers -- John had passed away -- in Island Park. Later that day, Michael’s twin brother, Mark, called to talk with me about his father’s passing. We visited about John’s health failing over the past few years and that his last six months had been centered on his desire to be at his cabin. I told Mark that I thought that John would have gone on to heaven a lot sooner except he did not want to leave Island Park. John’s widow, Marjorie, told me that at the same moment I was watching the low fly-by at my cabin, they were watching the hearse carry John’s casket down the road leading away from his cabin. I really don’t know if John hitched a ride in that backcountry Cessna as it flew around Island Park that morning, but I wonder if the pilot had a feeling that he may have had another passenger with him -- John always did like a low fly-by.
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