Flying by the Seat of my Pants

27 June 2023:

My friend and yardman for 20 years, Jim, died yesterday morning in hospice care where he’d been for a couple of weeks.  He was 85 or thereabouts.  We created a lot of beauty on a Vermont mountainside, and never had a cross word.

I didn’t learn of his death from his daughter until mid-day by which time I had experienced one of my occasional convulsions of sobbing that are among the richest moments of my life.  

They are instigated by an overwhelming sense of the sacred beauty of every little thing, usually sparked by a piece of music or a serendipitous link of circumstance.  Yesterday, it was the completion of a drawing that, for a week or more, had been patiently awaiting a finishing touch.  That touch finally revealed itself as I awoke before dawn, and upon its execution I learned via Facebook that the wife of a pal from high school had died that morning. 

Along with that news came my inner guidance saying that the freshly completed drawing of a woman of presence was to be my gift to my friend and his family, despite having had little contact with him all these 62 years since graduation, and of course having never met his wife.

But there it was: divine guidance that whatever life this drawing was destined to have was to begin yesterday in celebration of a woman I would know only from Facebook remembrances of those who treasured her.

And so I wept at the beauty of it.  

And when, a few hours later, I learned of Jim’s death, I smiled in recognition of his presence in that earlier moment of the drawing’s completion and launching into the world.  

He was touching me as he was leaving town, saying, “See you later, pecker head,” his favorite name for me when it was clear to him that I was flying by the seat of my pants.