My Father Sings . . . When It's Springtime in the Rockies & Let the Rest of the World Go By

The last day of my visit with Dad, one last time I sit near him while he pedals his arms and pulls down weights from overhead.  We sing softly together to make the time pass. Some of the other residents lean their heads over and ask us to sing a little louder but we shake our heads and laugh a little shyly.  We sing for our own enjoyment, we say, and not to inflict a subpar performance on anyone else.  Besides we're half the time choking on emotion as I'm getting as teary as Dad is.  Especially today. Tomorrow I'll be driving back north and away. We sing through all the regulars, then I suggest "Springtime in the Rockies." It's a hopeful coming back again song and one my dad's mother always liked. One song leads to another and we find ourselves singing its companion song, "Let the Rest of the World Go By," this following that like it always does.

I tell Dad about the summer I spent with his parents and how they taught me the words to both these songs, wedged between them on the bench seat of the old blue Ford pickup, headed up the canyon for the ward campout at Fish Lake. It was a rainy day so the sagebrush was sweet on the air. Earlier in my visit, Grandma and Grandpa had driven me up on West Mountain and Grandpa and I had gotten out in the high meadow of his mountain land and filled an ice cream gallon bucket with wildflowers: Indian paintbrush, mountain bluebell, wild western rose. All week, every morning I opened my eyes, they were a glory on the dresser in the old back bedroom at the top of the stairs.

Good memories to share this All Saints' Day, dwelling on our dear departed. While we're singing, Grandma and Grandpa seem closer than ever. These are the songs I drive "home" to tonight, heading back one last evening to my parents' house, which used to be my grandparents' and will always be home for me, steeped in so many layers of memory and gratitude for songs and singers here and far away.

* * *

When it's springtime in the Rockies
I'll be coming home to you, 
Little sweetheart of the mountains
With your bonnie eyes of blue.

Once again I'll say I love you
While the birds sing all the day,
When it's springtime in the Rockies
In the Rockies far away.

Is the struggle and strife we find in this life
Really worth while, after all?
I've been wishing today I could just run away
Out where the west winds call . . .

With someone like you, a pal good and true,
I'd like to leave it all behind and go and find
Some place that's known to God alone, 
Just a spot to call our own.
We'll find perfect peace, where joys never cease
Out there beneath the kindly sky. 
We'll build a sweet little nest somewhere in the west
And let the rest of the world go by.

With someone like you, a pal good and true, 
I'd like to leave it all behind and go and find
Some place that's known to God alone,
Just a spot to call our own.
We'll find perfect peace, where joys never cease
Out there beyond the Great Divide. 
We'll build a sweet little nest somewhere in the west
And let the rest of the world go by.