Death of an Old Vyking: Requiem

THE DAY THE CACTUS DIED: It is the last week in March 2010, I am in the front yard digging in the dirt, tearing out my ten foot tall large frozen cactus which did not survive the winter of 2009-10.  What a gooey mess.I am so with Gaynelle and David.  I am chopping and remembering the good times sailing the rivers and bay of Virginia. I am crying for days long gone. Gaynelle’s voice rings in my ears with “Don’t be so melodramatic. You cry all the time, so crying is not special with you.” So I told her I would fly to Tulsa and just stay with her.  She said, “I don’t need one more miserable person around here.” She took a breath and added, “I am miserable, David is miserable, and here we are in this small hospital. Small hospitals are friendlier.” In spite of everything, I know that they are where they should be at this time.  It has to be, because no one could have thought this up on purpose.

So the sailing Vyking and his Valkyrie now find themselves on the rolling prairie seas of Oklahoma: “Livin’ on Tulsa Time”.

In my memory of them, they have always been a part of each other and always there for the other with all the same ins and outs that free thinking modern couples have.  They lived life to the limit and then some.  They, together, have always been there for the other guy.  I see them as together because I have never know them any other way. 

Each of us has a story to tell.  There was day in 1982, I was one of those other ones that they reached out to and offered a hand up to a better life.  All of you have stories to tell and all the stories are worth the telling.

The Vyking closed the log book on his life and his story:

Set the Mainsul: Made way for Valhalla.

We stand on the shores of life, wave goodbye and say, “Well done, David, well done.  Farewell, my friend, farewell.”

We humans all stand at a bedside and wait with baited breath to hear the last words of dying.  We seek not for them, but for ourselves, some message to be told us from the Other Side that we could take hold of and walk away with courage and insight for all the trials and sorrows to come.

David’s words were three sentences spread out over the last two days.

David looked at Gaynelle and said,“We had a good run, didn’t we.”A strong verbal gift to the one left behind.Later he exclaimed with a strong voice, “I’m glad I did it. I learned a lot!” What? Who? We do not know.  We only know he was pleased.Then the last and strongest of all, “Son Of A Bitch!”  The rattle of the last breath leaving always leaves the rest of us with questions. Who or What Did He See? Gaynelle quietly smiles her quirky smile, “I think he saw his mother!”

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