Ocean and life and death

It’s a blessing to be near an unspoiled corner of Earth (thanks to the federally protected National Wildlife Refuge). I won’t even go into the strangeness of protecting chunks of land while exploiting others right across an invisible boundary –– I’ll save that for a later post. Meanwhile, I’ve had many good long walks and a picnic lunch on the sand overlooking the Back Bay (the water between the sandy barrier island I’m on and the actual edge of the continent).





The ocean has revealed several distinct aspects of its faceted personality this week. When I arrived it was tranquil and gentle. As a squall blew in mid week, the ocean churned and tossed (bringing the “oceans, white with foam” image to this simple mind). The ocean’s sound is variable, too, going from a soothing whoosh to a roar to a pounding presence.



As I’ve watched and listened to the waves this week I can’t help but think of my aunt Joan (pron. joANN), who passed away Monday morning. My thoughts are drawn to an image of life, death, and eternity that a friend once shared: He said that, in his mind’s eye, all life is part of a vast oceanic reality. Individual lives are like waves that rise and fall, crest and crash, and ultimately return to their source.
I watched the waves and thought of Aunt Joan, and others whom I’ve loved and bid farewell. Though it’s easy to miss the distinct character of each wave within the larger context, there are definite differences between them. Some pound and crash, often nearly spending their energy by the time they reach shore. Others are more gentle and soothing. All bring gifts from the depths.



Joan was like one of the subtle waves. She seldom raged or pounded (at least not in my hearing), yet she inexorably sculpted the landscape of my life and left a lasting presence. She was a smart, self-possessed, well-educated woman in a time and place where that was not common. She and her husband were in a relationship of equals, something that was fostered by her economic independence but was not only because of that. I think she wouldn’t have accepted anything else. Joan was clearly in love with Uncle John throughout their long marriage, but I got a sense that he’d had to court her, to win her. Somehow the courtship never quite ended –– and she seemed worth the effort.
Joan had style all her own; she was a gracious hostess and a good cook and it seemed she could make any plant grow and flourish. Her indoor kumquat tree bore fruit every year, which seems now like a metaphor for a life that bore fruit through patient tending and nurturing. Her life brought gifts forth from the depths, and deposited them on the sparkling shore. (No small example is her modeling for me a relationship that could embody both fidelity and romance over the course of a lifetime.)
I’m sad about the loss of my aunt, but not sad for her. She had been increasingly affected by Alzheimer’s in recent years; it had settled across her mind like a scum of oil over an ocean wave. For her I imagine death to be a blessed relief in which the body’s propulsive energy plays itself out like a wave reaching its fingers up the beach, finally giving in to the pull of the ocean, the power of returning (and, one hopes, joyously reuniting).
Go in peace, noble spirit. The many who have loved you now walk along the shore and lift up your gifts, collect them like bright shells in baskets. One day I hope we meet again in the mysterious depths.