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On May 27th, 2022, my father Jan Frederick Baumgardner, for years a basso profundo with the Boulder Timberliners, joined the Barbershop Choir Invisible. He left me down by the Old Mill Stream. He left me crying, blue and sad—to be reunited with his mother, Luella Dehn, and his infant sister, Frances, who took their mom from Jan when he was eight. I imagine their embrace as a flash of light that healed the world. No woman ever loved him that much; I know that for a fact because I am a daughter and a mother. And because eight years was not long enough to breed contempt. And my grandmother is definitely in heaven. She was kind of a saint, from the way people talk about her.

He also got to see his brothers Carl Forest and Martin Baumgardner again, and their father John Baumgardner who, on the other side, is surely able to share his own love and deep gifts in purity and perfection beyond the spiky domino effect of life’s twists. I can imagine Dad’s childlike joy to see his aunties again: Mary, Martha, and Betty, a.k.a. Sister Mary Barnabus of the mystical, practical Benedictines. She eschewed marriage to watch over him with care and affection all his life; I remember him calling her every week. He’s with his beloved grandparents and so many other family members, and friends, and neighbors and associates from his hyperactive and extroverted time on the planet. I see him radiating good will and affection, his wit and insight benign and hitting every mark. In heaven, I would like to think you can be your very best self. And there he’s the father I’m proud and lucky to have walked this world with, sometimes even hand in hand.

Read Jan’s obituary and leave a note here