The man in the boat.....

It’s my brother Tom’s birthday! I miss him terribly, but especially on this special day.

He was a remarkable artist who had no formal training. He could look at any scene or object and re-create it in any medium you asked him to—pen and ink, pencil, crayon—I was so envious of his talent I could scream!

I found out a few days after his funeral, when I was clearing out his things from Mom’s house and found a journal he had been keeping, that he could also paint beautiful pictures with words!

He wrote an entry dated about a month after his son Tommy was killed in a boating accident while they were out fishing.  It read:

“Every time I go fishing, I will remember that the last moments of Tommy's life were filled with love. Because I know how much he loved me and that we had spent a blissful afternoon; and we were excited about the prospect of spending the remainder of the day together fishing, swimming and laughing--completely content.

Some time ago, I was asked the question, "What do you think are the one or two words that describe how you would like to live the rest of your life?" I responded with "contentment and serenity." Afterwards, I was asked to draw what my vision of "contentment and serenity" would look like.

I drew a picture in my mind of a man sitting, no, reclining in a simple rowboat, with a straw hat providing his only disguise from the mid-day sun. Far in the distance the shoreline doubled as the horizon, with images of some agricultural outbuildings, surrounded by harvested cornfields, somewhat overgrown by time. The remainder of the horizon was in its natural state, as one would expect to see on any leisurely Sunday drive in the mid-west states of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana or Michigan; Tall cottonwood trees, Dutch elms, oaks, river birch, and eucalyptus.

The sun was giving the most magnificent reflection of all of Nature's beauty on the water, ever-changing with the passing of the day. Out of nowhere the sweet, warm afternoon breeze would cause the sunlight to sparkle through the leaves of the trees on the horizon; falling, then without warning, dancing with the boat through the rippling carpet of water.

Possibly the most serene notion of this beautiful passage of time is that…"

Tom’s entry stopped abruptly there.  I wish he had drawn the picture and included it in the entry, but I could see what he was describing as clearly as if he had painted it. I was crying as I read it and I believe that the Holy Spirit allowed me to see into Tom’s heart at that moment and finish his sentence:

’Possibly the most serene notion of this beautiful passage of time is that…I am the man in the boat’.

Please join me in prayer today that since he didn’t have the “contentment” and “serenity” he so hoped for in this life that he is enjoying both now wrapped in the arms of Our Blessed Mother in the presence of her Son.