Floyd set up his canvas folding beach chair close to the surf and alongside the pier. He drove its legs deep into the sand and plopped down into it before popping open a can of something cold. He was wearing the pink shirt she liked so much and he knew also that he was sitting in one of their favorite spots. Floyd sat on the edge of his seat, leaning forward like he didn’t want to miss a beat. The sun was about to set and he was silent awhile as he listened to the breathing of the ocean, watching its chest swell with each breath.   Ocean breathes and ocean speaks. Ocean breathes and ocean speaks. Nobody can speak without breathing he thought, even the ocean can’t speak without breathing. What does the ocean speak, he wondered? What is its wisdom? The same kinds of wise things it has been speaking since its beginning. ” This too has come to pass,” it might say, “this too. Hold your peace.” Whatever it was you could depend upon it to have always remained the same even as it roared and tossed. He was feeling very philosophical today for some reason, even a little poetic. And the wisdom of the ocean seemed to intermingle with her voice, she who was departed from him now, yet with whom he conversed as it was his custom to do this time every evening near sunset.
Speaking of wisdom he had observed once as they sat together in their canvas beach chairs, “so many people are limping in this world.” “Yes, she had replied in her characteristically wise way, “some visibly and others inwardly and not so visibly.”
Another time he made this thoughtful comment after what passed for a financial consultation, “bullying doesn’t stop on the playground, it only takes on more subtle forms and shapes.” To which she insightfully replied, “some subtle and some not so subtle.”
Still another time he asked this whimsical question, “I wonder if our tears are numbered, and if we are allowed only so many in life?”. She pondered that for a moment and answered this way, “no, new wells can always be dug for those that are willing.” “You’re right, otherwise we’d both have run dry a long time ago.”. Not that all the talking was so deep. Most of it, in fact, was very ordinary. A pool after all has both a deep and a shallow end, a lake has its shoreline and the depths in the middle. One can’t appreciate one without the other.  Besides, even the ordinary and mundane exchanges in marriage have a bonding power.  There is someone present who cares about the common yet intimate details of their spouse.  Everyone has a need to elaborate on commonplace personal details that no one else would be inclined to care about, other than a spouse or a very close friend. Lacking that spouse or close friend many will pay dearly for a listening ear, many do in fact hire one.  There is actually a sense of fulfillment and completion in being able to elaborate those details to a listening, caring ear.  They had been blessed with a lot of the pleasure of that kind of fulfillment over their years together.­  In their mutual delight in being waterside and observing sunsets, he once wrote this poem for her.

The Sun For Example

They were so in love that one would sorrow when it was time to go to sleep, sorrow that they had to do it separately. To remedy that dilemma they prayed that they might dream in unison and enjoy each other’s presence there in that misty realm as well. It is not known if those prayers were ever answered though they suspected it might have happened once or twice. They were so at one that they often finished each other’s sentences and not always correctly, but that didn’t seem to matter much. Or they would blurt out the same thought simultaneously after a long silence. Like the fabled oak trees their lives were so interwoven that the roots became entangled, and it came to pass that they grew increasingly intertwined over the years.
That’s just it, it only came to PASS, because she, Floyd’s beloved, was departed from him now. But these conversations by the ocean near sunset helped for their life together to pass back around to him. Maybe these conversations were really counseling sessions by the ocean with the ocean as counselor and mediator. Many come to counseling because they’re unhappy, they came because they were so happy and wanted to unpack it, to better understand why they were so happy, so it would continue. He would occasionally sing a little song to her from the 4th chapter of The Song of Solomon, a poem that King Solomon himself had written long ago. “O my dove, that art in the cleft of the rock, in the secret places of the terraces, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.”. He truly believed he heard her sweet voice among the shifting terraces of the sea these evenings, even as he heard the wise counsel of the Holy Spirit deep in his heart.
But speaking of wonderful counseling and mediating, there was another subject that was taking on new clarity for him. If he could love someone so much as to have dreaded sleep for the separation that it brought, imagine the similar though much greater and more intense love of the One they call the Wonderful Counselor and the Mediator between God and humanity Jesus Christ. He grieves over the sleep-like state of so many of his people who could be in closer touch with him, to feel the desires of his heart and to think his thoughts with him. He wants and prays and longs to meet us in the dreams he is dreaming for us, so that we never have to distance ourselves or be separate from him ever again! Like Enoch who so closely walked with God and was no more because God decided to take him to Himself or, perhaps, take him over completely, so there was still another voice beginning to come through in these lovely conversations by the sea near sunset,  holding all the other voices together so that they were even more coherent. Mingled with the soft, sweet penetrating voice of his dear departed in the secret places of the stairs and the rolling counsel of the ocean is the melodic tone of the great lover of all souls and oceans rolling from the beginning of time. And I know that this dates Floyd and me, but we couldn’t help but marvel that there is something very stereophonic about that!