promise to keep
Published May 31, 2006 | 
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Well, tonight I’m sitting on a trail of ground up woody bits under a forest of green-gray oak. The sun has just fallen below the horizon and a bee buzzes just by my side. I slap mosquitoes away as I type, all the while wiping the sweat from my temples and trying to focus my thoughts before they dissipate. A car door slammed shut. Birds are announcing the coming of night.
A few minutes ago Simon Osborne completed his presentation on his circumnavigations of both Ireland and Great Britain. You couldn’t help but be awed by the photos of imposing cliffs and twisting waves. It was all very impressive and amazing. But I can’t stop focusing on the photograph of Simon and his brother Mark from many years ago smiling from an odd shaped little wide kayak. Mark has long since died of leukemia. I find myself contemplating the mission. The drive to raise money. I wonder about how love and memory translate into actions. And how such sad events can take a life and lead it into a strange future where you find yourself paddling around countries, or in a foreign land clicking a wireless mouse and hoping the technology will agree to play nice.
When my father died of lung cancer so many years ago, I just felt confused. Powerless. I didn’t see a mission, or a promise to keep. All I could take with me was suffering and loss. I took a memory of him lying in this antiseptic little gray room telling me it was ok to cry. I framed it in my mind’s eye and never let that frozen image escape my vision. “It would all be all right”, he said. Sitting there looking at his colorless face, I suspected it wouldn’t be. At his bedside I would smile and try for his sake to cheer up. “Well, THIS certainly is NOT all right!”, I thought. I wonder if he could fathom how I would be twisted by his loss. I wonder if his relationship with me was as confusing as I felt mine was with him? That summer was the first 2 months I’d ever really spent with him and now it was Christmas and he was going away. How did we say good-bye? Had’nt we just met?
Simon found some action to take. Something to do. Sure you can’t bring anyone back. You can’t make it all right. It’s not. But you can keep a promise. Beyond all the fun we’ve had together this last week; Beyond two strangers seperated by a common language trying to make a go of a few days in close proximity; floating around the laughs, the caves, the photos, and the beer; and around all of the “kayak related goofing off”, is that promise. I didn’t catch that right away. Suddenly here I find myself thinking of my father who died when I was just 14. I imagine how Simon must have felt at the loss of his brother. How odd in some ways this journey must seem to him sometimes. I think I was missing the message. Or at least avoiding it for my own sake. But I got it now. I’m really proud of Simon. I doubt I’ll be able to say “cheers” over that bottle of Corona with lime without just a little admiration slipping through. Just a pinch anyway.
As for me, I doubt I’ll paddle around some big island any time soon. I don’t know if I’ll raise money or fight for a cause. I don’t know. I’m not sure my father would have understood the concepts. But I did promise him that it would be all right. And that’s probably a good place to start.
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8 Responses to promise to keep
Awesome thoughts, Derrick. I was paddling around Manitoulin Island when my father died. I was in Michael’s Bay when I suddenly felt a ‘chill’ and knew something was wrong. We had been joking about arriving at that bay, my ‘Personal Place of Power’, and what I might discover there. When I got home after the trip, I discovered the reason for that odd ‘chill’. I thought I knew my father, but as the years go by and I watch my son growing into the world, I wonder how much we can every really know another person. We can only try.
So touching. It is an honor to have been able to share your meditation on loss and handling grief. Interesting how kayaking played such a key role for you as well as for “Michael.”
Thank you,
Alyson, thisnext.com/blog
Word.
–Thomas
thanks everyone!
Derrick,
This hit me hard when i read it late last night and i had to take the night to reflect on my thoughts. I am very glad that the journey we are both on allowed our paths to cross and that you could take somthing away from the lecture to reflect on your own life. I feel very lucky to have been given the oportunity to keep Marks memory going after so many years. You have an incredible way with words that i admire. You seem to be able to put across feeling in text wich is for me one of the hardest challenges.
Thanks for everything.
Thanks Simon,
I’m pretty sure that many, many people come away from your presentation reflecting on their experiences as well. So many of us share in one way or another the scars of cancer in our families. Way beyond kayaking this makes what you are doing so important. Much more so than anything I could write here.
I’m also very glad our paths crossed!
best poem about the death of a loved one I ever read
Mid-term Break
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying–
He had always taken funerals in his stride–
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were “sorry for my trouble,”
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.
Seamus Heaney
Derrick,
I never knew that you were such a gifted writer. I always have issues writing what I feel. Im glad that you came out of Simons presentation with such a wide out look.
Adriene