In tribute

Living in a condo provides opportunities to meet your neighbors in a way that single family homes don’t.

In the short time we’ve been in Punta Gorda we’ve had the pleasure of many conversations with neighbors as we come and go.  Though we’re from different generations and in some cases from different countries, we’re connected by our love of Florida (or desire to avoid cold, however you want to look at it).

We learned that two of our neighbors, one full time and one snowbird, died last week.  Neither was a surprise, but that doesn’t make it any easier for their wives and other loved ones.

A couple days ago I was thinking of a woman I met in 2006; she was divorced, no kids, my age, animal lover.  We kept in touch for a year or so, then life got in the way.  For me, anyway.  I’ve thought about her many times over the years and finally decided to look her up again.  With the magic of the internet I located information in about five minutes.  She died in December 2008.

I’m reminded of something Kevin shared with me last year:   

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!”

“Gone where?”

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!” There are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: “Here she comes!”

And that is dying.

~Henry Van Dyke

Appropriately, I ran across this quote from Michael Landon this week (pa from Little House on the Prairie for all you youngsters)

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say.  Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.

With that, I’m going to “carpe diem” as Dad says.  The sun is out, the birds are singing and I’m going to go squeeze the life out of this day!