Over the years we were colleagues, my friend was a gifted and visionary leader in his field. To whatever task he put his hand, he always promised “to leave the woodpile a little higher than [he] found it.” He succeeded admirably and his retirement was well-deserved. To retirement as well he set the same goal, namely to take full advantage of the time and, in the words of Robert Kennedy, “to make gentle the life of this world.” That, too, he did when he published a book of reflections on life in the region in which he and his wife had settled.
It was a shock, then, when the news came that my friend had entered a memory care facility. I knew then that our long conversations about the books we were reading, the events of the day, and the state of things generally, and especially the ways of Mother Nature at this critically changing time, were to be no more.
Not able now to hear his voice, I turned instead to his printed words, and these spoke even more forcefully and compellingly that when first I had read them, though at the time of that reading, many of his observations were underlined, to wit:
“It is in weathering that knowledge comes to the heart.”
“Love is a long gift in a hard season.”
“We are either solitary by nature and search for community, or are inherently communal and long for solitude.”
“Then, too, I am among that last generation that will have lived a full lifetime with the printed page. Everything is in electronic form today. My bookcase of old friends is already a museum of obsolete technology.”
“That memory fades is a blessing the moving sun bestows that otherwise would trap all we know in shadow and a single sounding of the bell.”
My mornings, like those of friends I know, begin with a quiet time. “Meditation” would be too grand a term. That half hour serves, as my late mother-in-law was fond of describing, as “the rudder of the day.” It is now my friend’s little book of reflections that gives the jump-start to my musings. He would approve of that, most certainly. I wish I could tell him so.
Ultimately, my friend puts it all in context: “Only that nature harms and heals alike — self serene, and without regret or praise.” He has truly accomplished his mission: the woodpile is taller.