Friday night I motored out to sea with about twenty other people to throw ashes and flowers out of boxes onto the smooth water, the setting sun above, the calico bass below, white flower petals floating in a line out behind the boat.
It was a moment. I had trouble knowing what to feel. We rode home through the sloshing sea in the dark. An orange bonfire glowed on the shore. I sat alone for part of the trip.
What remains — a sense of the sea, an image of a pelican floating on the air beside the boat, a swirl of bright color in the water as a bass took a small fish on the surface, a swell picking up the boat and softly letting it down again, the flowers on the surface of the sea.
Monday night I talked to my daughter for a long time. We were both ruffled a bit by the day — picked up, set down, taken on the rise, sloshing in the dark and to each other we were a small bonfire on the shore, a splash of warmth and color on a small phone screen as we video chatted each other back up. We prayed for each other before we hung up.
Sunday after church I hugged some people and made a couple of lunch appointments for next week. Bonfires.
Life is loss and gain, up and down, moving close and then farther off, riding together, riding alone, thinking about it.
We are grass, caper and vapor, flowers on a tree, flowers in a box, flowers in the air, flowers floating in a saline sea.
I don’t like losing people. Nobody does. I don’t much like being close and then not being close anymore.
I think I’ll make more phone calls and lunch appointments, and do what people ask me to do for them, even when it is hard, and pray more, and grow flowers and not pick them, as much as I can.
I remain hopeful.
Thrive! 