THAT FINAL VOYAGE
What a majestic, noble ship, this three-masted
schooner! It would never face the
challenges of sailing on the high seas, and yet would face greater ones. It started life as a more humble
single-masted boat. Our son had asked for a model boat to put together. It would be for his twelfth birthday. The look on his face as he unwrapped the box
that contained the model revealed excitement and deep appreciation tinged with
a hint of disappointment. It would be
the twelfth model he would assemble, and certainly the grandest of them
all. And yet, we could see in his eyes
that it was not as grand as he’d imagined it would be. He knew something we didn’t.
Over the following days, I would pass his room and see him
patiently fit the pieces together. It was a large model, and required me to set
up two card tables side by side for him I was often tempted to ask him how his project was coming along, or to
give him a word of praise for his diligence. His mother and I, however, knew
that he desired no comment, no critique, and, especially, no applause. Working on these models was a private affair
for our son. Nonetheless, his mother and
I took great joy in seeing him looking so happy.
He got the model to a certain point, and then stopped. He placed it on a shelf and began working on
other things. He pulled out books on
boats and ships from his bookshelf. He
got on his computer and either pecked
away at the keyboard or browsed the Internet. Had he lost interest in this model project for some reason? We
were saddened, as we always enjoyed the part of the process where he put on
decals, attached sails, and named the boat the most. But this was not about us.
One Saturday morning he asked me to take him to the
hobby shop, where I’d purchased the model. He had printed out a list and handed it to the shop manager. With allowance money he’d saved over the
weeks, along with birthday money he’d received from his grandparents, he
purchased what, to me, seemed like an exorbitant amount of supplies. I said nothing. It was his money to spend as he chose.
We returned home and he went to his room. After a while, I passed by the room to see
that he'd taken the model off the shelf and was working on it with a passion
I’d never seen before. Over the
following weeks, he patiently transformed the shell of the model boat into a
three-masted schooner. Though obviously
brand new, our son had made the ship to look as it had endured years of brutal
use coupled with prideful maintenance.
One night, our son was passed from the hands of death and
into the arms of God and eternity. Years
of fighting an illness that ravaged his body, but never his spirit, were now
over. We found him the following morning
snuggled against the model ship he had lovingly not only assembled, but
created. On his desk was a “Last Will
and Testament.” In this poignant
document was a request that his body be cremated and his ashes placed inside
the schooner. He had even made places on
the deck where the flooring could be removed and the ashes poured.
A few weeks passed, and we finally decided to check his
computer for whatever he might have written or saved. We found downloaded images of the details of
schooners and other nineteenth century sailing vessels, details that included
itemized specifications for many of the ships. Our son had carefully scaled everything to match the size of his
model. In addition, we found lots of
short stories our son had written, stories cobbled from the writings of Jack
London, Ernest Hemingway, and Herman Melville; maps and drawings; and ideas
from his own vivid imagination. The last
thing he’d written was a poem:
Oh, glorious vessel!
Begun from a box,
But finished in the mind.
A strong, wonderful mind,
Made to weather harsh seas, and harsher winds,
Yet stored in a body that wasn’t.
Oh, glorious vessel!
What adventures we’ve had!
Will have!
Until that final voyage,
God speed!
I printed out the poem and had it framed alongside a photo I had furtively taken of our son as he put the finishing touches on his masterpiece. We placed it in our living room on a shelf beside the majestic, noble schooner.
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