Keeping wind in a writer’s sails

BARBARA WANTED ME to keep writing.

For my 65th birthday, five days after she passed away, I got the gift of a packet of reporter’s notebooks, the slim, coil-bound pads that every journalist carries in a pocket — all over the world, in my case. They aren’t easy to come by if you don’t work for a newspaper, but Barbara had found them online and ordered me a bunch. She planned to give them to me at the birthday party she didn’t get to attend.

It would be easy to pack it in and stop writing. She represented so much in my life that was good and happy and comfortable. And I like to write about the good, happy and comfortable parts of life. I don’t like learning that it’s hard to insert contact lenses when your eyes are full of tears. I don’t like waiting to awaken from this bad dream so I can hear her call me to dinner.

But Barbara, Nuthatch Cabin’s friendly ghost, would want me to write about the good parts, so that’s what this post is about — a visit from an old buddy who didn’t hesitate to come running when I needed company. A week ago, my friend Ken Brinkley came up from Portland for a five-night visit.

It reminded me of a painful time 15 years ago when I went to Ken’s side after a sailing tragedy took the life of his wonderful 18-year-old son, Andy. I asked him to come now, in part, because I knew he’d been through the kind of grinding grief I’m facing.

It happens that I met Ken for the first time in these islands. It was the 1980s, and a group of colleagues from The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Washington, where I worked for 10 years, took a party weekend at Rosario Resort, on Orcas Island. (Incidentally, it was a stupid place to party. I seem to recall a late-night visit from a sheriff’s deputy.)

Ken, who was married to one of my co-workers, stood up at a meal gathering and asked if anybody else was interested in hiring a sailboat for an afternoon on the sparkling waters of East Sound. I was the only one to raise my hand.

It was the start of a 35-year friendship. Barbara and I later joined Ken and his (now-ex) wife in chartering a larger sailboat in the San Juans, an adventure that eventually led us to acquire Sogni d’Oro, the sailboat on which we explored these islands every summer for decades, and sailed to Mexico in the mid-1990s.

Just having company at the Nuthatch this past week was a blessing. I did all the cooking, with tips I’d learned from Barbara (vegan barbecue rarely tasted so good) and a menu prepared with the help of daughter Lillian, who had returned to Seattle and work. Ken pitched in and helped me with rough and tough cabin chores that had been deferred for months. The hard work was a good distraction from sadness. He brought a bulging satchel of old movies. (All VHS tapes! Ken is 10 years older than I.)

After a trip to the Lopez Island dump on Sunday, we took a sack lunch and hiked to gorgeous Shark Reef Sanctuary, where we sprawled on a sunny cliffside and watched gray whales spout and tail-slap among the roiling tidal waters off Cattle Point. The morning Ken departed, we sat at a favorite Center Island bluff with a view of the snow-draped Olympic Mountains and sun-dappled Lopez Sound, where an otter dove and played. I’d never seen either of those creatures in those places. I think Barbara is pulling strings for me now.

It’s just me and the cats in our cabin for the next few days. The loneliness can be grueling, but I have other visits in the offing. Sometimes an old friend, ready to listen and ready to help, is life-saving nourishment for an emotionally starving man.

Barbara wanted me to keep writing. Here I am.

An old friend from college, Kathy Pruitt, sent this poem that gives her comfort when thinking about loved ones who have passed away.

Finding you in Beauty

The rays of light filtered through
the sentinels of trees this morning.
I sat in the garden and contemplated.
The serenity and beauty
of my feelings and surroundings 
completely captivated me.
I thought of you.
I discovered you tucked away
in the shadows of the trees.
Then, rediscovered you
In the smiles of the flowers
as the sun penetrated their petals
In the rhythm of the leaves
falling in the garden
In the freedom of the birds
as they fly searching as you do.
I'm very happy to have found you,
Now you will never leave me
For I will always find you in the beauty of life.
-- Walter Rinder