Reposted from Facebook:

Dear friends, family, and the many who seem to fall into both categories at once:

Last night, in the small hours, Dad took his last breaths. It was the winding down of a clock, and we knew the moment was coming when the hands would stop moving; it was all peaceful, and then came the dawn.

John Weaver had an incredible career life: at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church where he met Marianne, and then at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church for the bulk of his career; as the chair of the organ departments at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City; as an international concert recitalist, with whom Mom traveled and played the flute; as a composer of stunning organ masterworks and beautiful choral settings. He taught a generation of the world's finest organists, and was known for both his high standards and his kindness. He was prouder than anything that his students succeeded him at Juilliard, Curtis, Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, and most recently at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. Their successes made him rejoice.

Dad was such an amazing light--I feel all the words I've ever been taught are inadequate to describe his warmth, humor, intelligence, artistry, mastery, goodness, dignity, and integrity. For all he achieved, his favorite places were a tiny valley town once called Mauch Chunk and built by the train industry, and an A-frame house on a high hill in Northern Vermont, where his own model trains made their last home.

When Jonathan died, Dad wrote on behalf of us all. Then, we traveled to Kansas to memorialize him; today there is no traveling, except in our minds, where we must catch a gentle line of music and let it take us over the hill he loved to mow in summer, around the long, slow bend of a train skirting the base of a mountain, through the imaginary worlds of Archenland and Shernland where his fictional children's tales were set, and right up, with him, to heaven.

To Jonathan: we send you Dad, where we know your love awaits.

-Kirianne