When we were little kids growing up in New Jersey, my brother and I would watch the same Christmas programs on TV year after year. Television itself was only a little older than we were, and the programs I remember were in black and white and lacking any special effects...but they were no less special to us. One that I remember was about how Franz Gruber had composed “Silent Night” one snowy evening in Austria. I took this snowy picture on the Saturday night my brother called me from New Jersey to say that our father had died. A blizzard had begun earlier in the day, and it would continue all night and all the following day, making travel impossible. After the storm had finally passed, and we were able to dig out, I headed south. Brien and I got through the formalities and the sadness by listening to the soundtrack album from Robert Altman’s Nashville on his truck’s CD player in the funeral parlor parking lot. When I see this photo, I think of that “Silent Night” TV program, of my late father, of “heavenly peace.”
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