Life is like a boat ride across the great lake from Wisconsin to Michigan. The curve of the earth is such that you cannot see the opposite shore from either side. Only after you have travelled some distance out can you start to see the faint outline of the far shore. At halfway, on a clear day, you can see both shores. But as you get closer to your destination the place where you departed becomes much harder to see, while the approaching shore becomes very clear.
For me, the shore my ship sailed from is getting pretty obscure, and where I am heading is becoming more frighteningly real. As you get older you start to think about this shit. Too much. Sorry to any Michiganer’s out there to be using your state as a metaphor for death, don’t take it personally. No disrespect intended.
Anyway, a clearer view of one’s journey’s end encourages reflections about life’s purpose, life’s meaning. Why? Well, there is still time left, and I’d like to think I am using it wisely.
In the winter our pickleball folks move from playing outside to to a building with a small indoor court. There are usually 5-6 of us who come to play on Wednesdays and Fridays. With only one court and four players to a game, a few people have to rotate in and out. There is a small side room for practice, and if two people are sitting out they often find themselves there.
While one of the players and I were sitting a game out, dinking the ball back and forth in this small practice space, we talked about the upcoming holidays, and our holiday plans. I told her I was going to Nashville to visit my step-son and family, Gary, Cobie, and Graycen, and how much I was looking forward to the trip. It has been too long, and I miss them. She told me their family was going to the family ranch along Montana’s High Line. She talked about growing up on the ranch with her sisters, and helping her mother and father with chores. She talked about the changes that the ranch has gone through since her father passed away, the selling off or giving away of all the horses that were bred there. The impossibility of her mother keeping it up alone, and how the sisters all found their way back home to help out whenever things needed to get done.
I asked how long ago it was since her father passed away, and she said it was recently. She told me how what he thought was a minor injury was really an illness. How he hesitated going to the hospital because of how busy they were due to the influx of Covid patients. And his final decision not to have a risky surgical procedure that might have been fatal. And even if it was successful, it would have decimated life’s quality in his time left. She got a little choked up and teary eyed talking about it. It still affected her deeply.
I don’t know anything about this man, her father. But in her tear filled eyes and the hitch in her voice, I knew he must have been a wonderful father. And I thought to myself, what a gift this kind of love is.
I’m still not sure what I think about the concept of heaven and hell, and I don’t honestly believe our dearly departed are looking down on us from the afterlife. But if I had to describe life’s purpose, it just might be to have lived a life whose memory evokes a tear when reflected.
Maybe our purpose is simply a life well lived.
With the hope that we will be missed when we are gone.
