A Cup of Conversation – September 2019

Mary and I spent a week in San Diego to participate in a “paddle out” celebrating her late brother Billy’s life. These things are always bittersweet. Bitter because loss is final, sweet because love left behind never expires.

Another brother-in-law, whom I treasure, gathered the participants and graciously thanked everyone for being there. He quickly turned to me with that little grin and said, “…and because my brother is more eloquent than I, he will say a few words.”

Uhhh…uhmm…

A heads-up would’ve been nice, bro! I got through it okay, at least according to several of Billy’s old surfer friends but had the time to think presented itself this is what might have been said:

There’s an old proverb that reads the day of a man’s death is better than the day of his birth. The author was someone scholars believe to be the wisest man to ever live and, far lesser, the wealthiest. This man was a great king and ruled for an entire generation never knowing war (hence the wealth), a rare luxury few monarchs of antiquity ever enjoyed.

So why would anyone having EVERYTHING by this world’s standards say the last day is to be valued more than the first? Maybe wisdom told him something counter-intuitive to what we’re fed by a media complex programming almost everything we see and hear?

Wisdom says life promises NOTHING…except pain, struggle, disappointment and finally death. Love, joy, victory and good health in the same life are not promised. Death on the other hand can offer us hope, great hope for something far better. I wonder if Billy ever thought about these things out here waiting for his wave?

Billy did not live a life of material accumulation. He left behind neither distinguished career to boast nor elitist accomplishments to publish. Billy lived life filled with simple joy, surrounded by the beautiful wife of his youth, wonderful kids and many friends and family who deeply loved him. He never lived life alone and didn’t die alone. Truth told, if the measure of a man is how much he’s loved, Billy was the king. Maybe this is what the exceedingly wise, wealthy and accomplished Solomon was saying so many millennia ago.

Mary stayed another week to spend time with her mom. I flew home to an empty house with time on my hands to reflect on all the above. Time also afforded the opportunity to regrettably binge-watch a season of A Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu. I know…I know.

The horrific tale is disturbingly hooking but the thought of being water-boarded one milliliter more depravity in dim-hope of a fictional justice being served up was not worth prolonging the streaming infection. Justice, a righteous justice all humans thirst, man is incapable of remedying. The only redemptive quality is a stark reminder how good we really have it in this divinely blessed nation protected by rule of law grounded in moral absolutes not subject to perversion of grace, love and goodness by control-freak miscreants lusting after power, try as they will, in fiction and in reality. Okay, that was a really long sentence but not nearly as long exorcising tale from head will take.

Death when it comes, sovereign in time and purpose, and the hope of heaven is far better, at least measured against the increasingly sick, demented world of streaming video and those miserable souls responsible for its content.

We can only imagine the waves brother Billy is riding free from gravity and human imperfection. Now that is some streaming content worth producing.