Farewell To An Old Friend

It’s gone.

It needed to happen.

It took a lot of years, but it did finally happen.

There is a part of me that is relieved that it happened.

There is a part of me that is very sad that it’s a done deal.

Even knowing it’s what must be done … when it’s done … when it’s all said and done and finally a done deal … there’s something about it that’s difficult to wrap my mind around. Maybe not so much my mind. More so my heart and soul. There is a very real side to the deal that causes me to feel like I’ve said farewell to and buried a dear and lifelong friend.

It didn’t look like much there at the end.

Neglect had taken its toll. Neglect has a way of doing that. Decades of neglect take a heavy toll. At its end it looked nothing like its former self … not even a shadow of its former self.

I’ll not postulate on what it meant to others that had their start in life there. Nor will I postulate on what it meant to others that had some related or sterile association with it. Others have their own personalities. Others have their own perceptions. Others have their own experiences.

Personalities, perceptions, and experiences create their own judgments. Judgments have a way of creating either lasting bonds or fractures that endure. It’s one of those realities in life where, at times, even agreeing to disagree is unable to do the work of Super Glue in reattaching the pieces.

It was, to me anyway, a lot more than a familial habitation surrounded by fields and woods.

It was there where my woods wandering nature began to germinate in the soil of my nature.

I didn’t recognize the event. 

Nor was I aware of the seedling in my soul as it emerged and took shape. It was a slow and subtle process … one overshadowed by the life and social happenings that motivated me as a young boy to solitarily seek out the safe and friendly respite found in the fields and woods of that place. 

Motivated is too weak of a description. Drove is honestly a more accurate way to describe it.

Woods do not recognize social status. They do not impose peer pressure. They do not sponsor sibling rivalry or pecking orders. There is a rhythm of saneness in the woods … a wild and appealing rhythm of saneness … a rhythm of saneness that has a way of teaching and encouraging without ever succumbing to tactics involving personal humiliation.

I don’t remember who she was talking to. It may have been someone there in her living room. It may have been someone on the phone as she sat in her chair. I do remember my mom telling someone that David took to the woods after his daddy died.

The truth of the matter is that I took to the woods a long, long time ago … long before my dad died. That little seed that sprouted and quietly grew into a tree rooted in my inner being has cast its shade and influenced me a lot of years now. It’s always been there. The sorriest and worst times in my life were the years I ignored its shade and tried to blend with the other trees growing in the forest of life. 

At this point I can do no better than to live in its shade.

I admit that I spent a lot of time in those woods after my dad passed from this world.

I did a lot of reminiscing out there. I did a lot of mental sorting and reasoning. It was a convenient place to simply go for a solitary walk. Shirli and I went there to wander on a number of occasions. I used the fields and woods as an outdoor classroom for teaching bushcraft skills. There was also the looming reality factored into the equation … after the For Sale by Owner sign went up … that one day, sooner or later, the land title would be transferred, and I would no longer be able to wander those fields and woods except in memory.

Here’s to you, old friend.

Thanks for the memories.