The call came a little after one o'clock, shortly before the wife and youngest son got home.

After the call, I warmed up this machine, opened the Family Tree, and moved to the record for my uncle Howard.

And checked the little box for 'Deceased'. And typed in today's date, and my home town. Then clicked 'Save'.

The modern version of the old somber rituals of recording deaths in the family Bible.

I once had ten uncles on my father's side of the family.

As of seven o'clock this morning, there are only two left.

Unlike my cousin Jeff, this was no great surprise. A long wasting away to Alzheimer's. Nobody on the other end of the phone could tell me how my aunt was doing.

The main thing I remember about Howard was that he was such an avid fisherman. Not just somebody who enjoyed the sport, but one who lived for it.

How many camping trips of ours were diverted halfway across Colorado's western slope just because he heard they were biting on some other stream, or a different river?

Wherever we were, he was always afraid the fishing was better somewhere else.

A landscape professional, he was also frustrated at his inability to coax the Colorado blue spruce trees poached from along the roadsides to grow in their yard.

The one extra they disposed of in our front yard grew to be taller than the house, thriving on neglect.

My folks were born shortly after World War I, and most of their siblings and their spouses are older. It is no surprise that folks in their seventies, eighties and nineties are beginning to fade away.

Knew this time would come.

But this has been a long winter. I'm ready for spring.