The Writings of HANCOCK – A Private World

I self-published a book through Amazon in 2015.   The book was compiled in 2000 a few months after my father died and is a collection of his writings.  Dad was a rather private person including his writing.

It was a journal of thoughts that came out as letters to friends he kept, poems and poetry, and stories about people he met.  Some were written at painful times, others recorded gratitude and times of joy.  The writing was random yet thoughtful.  Although Dad shared some of these recorded thoughts with people, he shared them guardedly.

At its first go, the compiling was a vehicle allowing me to stay, for a time, close to Dad and to process the grief of losing him too soon.  Other opportunities came to continue the process and, as it should, the pain of his departure dimmed.  The sense of loss gave way to a quiet joy of knowing, really knowing he was at peace.

That first “book”, a simple Word document assembled in loose leaf style and photocopied, went to my immediate family.  I presented copies at a family gathering on Memorial Day weekend 2000, a few months after Dad was laid to rest.

Dad made several short-term mission trips to Costa Rica in the 1980’s.  He helped build church and school buildings, repaired stuff, and did what he could to discern things they needed.  He and the work team would then do what they could to bring those items on subsequent trips.

After he passed, I desired to visit the place that had meant so much to him, but over time, the desire slowly moved to the back burner.  Until the fall of 2014 when an opportunity emerged to join a short-term mission trip to Costa Rica myself.  I made the trip in late spring of 2015.

Preparation for this trip drew me back to the folder of Dad’s writings and prompted the scanning of several hundred Kodak slides he took of the various mission trips.  I took it with me in CD form to share with those at the mission I would serve.  This included the missionary who inspired Daddy to travel to Costa Rica.

It also provided an opportunity to revisit unanswered questions, without regret and loss choking the process.  To dig a bit deeper than I was prepared or able to do when the loss of his presence was too fresh.

In addition to scanning the slides, I also decided to self-publish The Writings Of HANCOCK into a more respectable format for wider distribution.  The primary audience remained family and friends but the “fifteen years later” version. The content was essentially done, with a bit of editing of the contextual commentary, I simply formatted it into the template provided and uploaded.

I now have two companion books in the works.  One is a biography, requiring a bit more research and content.  The other will be a similar format to The Writings Of HANCOCK centering on the diary Dad kept when he drove a truck from Kansas to Costa Rica to gift to the Mission.

My trip to Costa Rica in 2015 provided context to the latter project.  The dedication for the Costa Rica truck book will read something like:  “This book is dedicated to all who never thought they were doing anything special, but whose life demonstrated the extraordinary in the ordinary.“

In the meantime, The Writings of HANCOCK is available on Amazon.  Purchase it here.