Distant Shores

(2-minute read) – Let me tell you about a man that crossed over to distant shores the other day.

He was a gentle man that loved his garden. Now his garden will have to do without his tender attention. His flower beds will need someone else to turn them, or they will harden and dry out. His manicured lawn will soon be worse off, for it was that little patch of this earth that resisted the weeds thanks to him.

And his pool in the back garden was his pride and joy. Boy, oh boy, he could talk to me for ages about its ailments and its cures while we waited for Sunday lunch to be served.

I felt welcome and comfortable from the first time I met him in that home he faithfully cared for. Two years later he walked my wife down the aisle to me.

He gave me my first set of golf clubs. Not that they marked any significant beginning in my life. They were old sticks that he had inherited from somewhere, in the days when woods were really wood. So I blamed them for my poor golf… and I’ve had to keep finding excuses ever since. But I’ll think of him the next time I tee off.

I’ll think of his kind advice. His humble and friendly nature.

He taught me a lot about living in a house with fiery woman. How to hold your tongue and make peace, and still be there for the next Sunday lunch, and the next and the next.

But now there’ll be no more Sunday lunches with him. Those days are gone. His life and the lives of others around that Sunday lunch table, were fleeting. Time is short.

His wife, the fieriest of all, had lost her fire as she bade him good-bye. My throat closed up and I couldn’t speak a word as I held her tired body crying in my faintly-consoling arms. She stood bravely at his funeral and I knew as I held her she would miss him more than anyone there. But she would have to take her next breath… just like she had when she buried her first husband, and just like she had when she buried her two daughters.

She takes that next breath because she knows he’s not gone for good. He’s with her still. And they’ll be re-united fully for their kind of love never dies.

And I know too that he’s not gone for good. I’ll see him again on the other side, with those others that left their seats at his lunch table empty. We are all here for a short time before we too go off to that distant shore.

When it’s my time, maybe he’ll walk me down an aisle of light back to my wife. I hope so.

Bon voyage, Rob. Until we meet again where your garden will be fresh and your pool crystal clear. We’ll have lunch with the fiery women in our lives and we’ll play that dream round of golf together on distant shores.

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