Not that long ago I sat with a woman as she sat with her husband. Jack was a seafarer and he had died that very morning in their little apartment - his wish to stay in the bed that overlooked the eagle’s nest and the playground were granted by her. She accepted the invitation from me to pause, not to call the funeral home immediately. After a few hours, of holding his hand, playing his favourite songs, speaking, silence, and keening, she emerged from the little bedroom where he lay, her eyes swollen with tears. She offered to make me some coffee.
She got busy in the kitchen as I sat at a small table nearby. There was something so shockingly normal about watching her measure the coffee grounds and fill the coffee machine with water, open the fridge . . . life. She brought cookies, cream, and sugar, and then the coffee. She joined me at the table, forlorn.
I felt called to soothe her with a story. . . I had heard one similar a while back, I can’t remember where, but it seemed fitting.
“Have you ever seen Jack leave on his tugboat? Have you ever stood on the shore and watched him go?”
“Yes.” She answered, her eyes fixed on her cup.
“Imagine death being Jack on that tugboat, he is departing and you are standing on the shore. It’s a morning just like today - a bit overcast and breezy. The boat leaves the harbour as you watch it get smaller and smaller. You can see his boat on the distant horizon until the moment you can’t. It’s gone. And at that very same moment it disappears from your sight, a voice breaks the silence and says, excitedly, ‘Oh look! Here he comes!.”
There was a shift, a lightness, “That is so beautiful” she said.
We sat in silence for a while, dreaming into that vision.
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