From the end of Monday's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

"When a parent dies, as my father did early yesterday, you find yourself wandering backwards in time over all the years you've known them.

My father, a lifelong golfer for example, played it as it laid, as they say, like others of his World War II generation.

He was the opposite of a whiner. I never knew anyone who worked harder all those years he was raising my four brothers and I, or had a better time in his retirement.

Dad liked parties. He loved weddings because it was obvious he loved marriage. Nothing made him happier than seeing a young couple get together for life. I remember how happy he was and he and mom saw Kathleen and I get married a quarter century ago, they were walking on air.

Well this weekend once again, we were all there, this huge extended family of ours for our nephew Brian's wedding to the beautiful Julie. It was at the Aldridge mansion up in Rhode Island, where they made the movie Meet Joe Black.

Well, just like in the movie, the bride and groom were the toast of the party, my dad and his beloved Trudy were in heaven, and the families on both sides could not have been more joyous.

Dad died Sunday morning without warning, but also without terror, as if God had taken him in the glow of what he had just a few hours before called the happiest day of his life."