So this is it.

​

Hell, I’m dying. No, don’t ask me how or why.
 

The doctor had news, he said, damn him, and shot me between the eyes with it. So I made the decision right there not to have friends and relatives shelling out their cash to find me and tell me their sorrow. No, I’ll make the farewell tour myself, shake hands, have a few drinks, and stay no more than one day in each place. Then leave them in a state of half-graceful joy so that I can kick up my heels and fall dead with a good heart.
 

Maybe I’ll just set a few things down. I mean, don’t we all become philosophers when death looms? Strange ideas that we merely borrowed this hair, these eyelashes, a borrowed smile, going back to its rightful owner before the tenant leaves to solve the more profound mysteries of life, of time, and of existence. I worry that it will come in the middle of the night, like a thief standing on my bed, and with a yell, he will steal my last gasp breath. But right now it’s just a feeling in the pit of my stomach and the back of my head. I don’t want to die. I really don’t.
 

Sleep comes in fits and starts; sometimes I’m not sure if I’m dreaming or simply on a journey. I peer into the dark, wondering where I am. Then I see the pictures on the walls taking shape, the upholstered chair, the lamp, and the rug. Jesus, I put my hands over my face, trying to massage wakefulness back into my eyes. We may have four or five lives, or a dozen, or our spirit is immortal, yet we never find ourselves again.
 

I take myself to the bathroom and wash these tears away, but even as I do so, more happen. First light slits a sliver of a path in the sky. I look out the window and can see the raggedness of the shoreline where I’ve settled to live out my life. I’m brushing my teeth, uncertain as to why. Would a condemned man worry about the purity of his breath on that fateful morning? Habit, though, is comforting and reassuring. Habit is hopeful. I look in the mirror to see heavy eyes staring back at me. Did I get it right? Did I do for others? I bury my face into the towel and feel my heart bursting. I need a cup of tea. Strong.
 

Coming to my study, dawn has risen into a yellow light. There’s no fog bank out to sea, only calmness. I can make out the form of a boy running at the edge of the waves; he dances and jumps, and I’m unable to take my eyes off him. I feel a strong urge to go and join him, but sip at my tea, picking through a few papers on my desk. Still, my eyes keep peering toward the boy. Though he’s young, I see no parents, no friends. He’s quite alone. I watch as he challenges each wave to grab his ankles, but he is nimble enough to evade them.
 

As I leave my home, I’m thinking about the boy I saw dancing at the edge of my ocean. Such a boy, I thought, running wildly along the ragged, softly surging waves. I began to remember how much I loved the sea —its aloneness, wildness, hugeness, mystery —and how one day I knew I’d sink into it to learn more. I recall my twelfth birthday, which fell this week in late summer. Think... think... what about earlier? Think, God, think, born, living, people going away. A child, unnamed, a child creeping across the shore, being picked up by the tides and weather, weather so sweet it turned me sad because I knew it would go away.

 

Think. Living, lives, there was a mother, a father, and a girl, a tinker’s caravan set up camp by the sea, and this boy who came running by the tide alone, perhaps in need of company, or strangers; his hair blown wild, blue of eye, needing a holocaust of attention. He might have been born on that very day; he looked so new and fresh with the staring blue eyes of a hungry animal pursued along the shorelines of the world. He danced and laughed to the sounds of the mandolin, a boy, a beach, the universe, and the rarest wind you ever heard.
 

Then, from nowhere, or from the waves, the boy I’m thinking about stood before me, and the first thing he said to me was laughter. He’s glad to be alive and announces this by the very sounds he makes. I must laugh in turn, for his spirit is catching. He shoves out a wet, sandy hand. I hesitate. He gestures impatiently for me to take hold of it.
 

‘Com’on, friend, there isn’t much time.’ He says.
 

Such a boy, I recall, such a boy I would have liked as a son. Then, as if in a dream, we are running hand in hand, headlong to where? When we finally stop, my heart is beating up the inside of my chest. I gasp my question.
 

‘Why is there so little time?’
 

He doesn’t answer, runs off hell for leather along the shore. When I catch him, we tumble into the sand, boy and man, playing. I pin him down. He gasps, and as he does so, I leap back and shake my head. The boy is me! I feel as though a friend has punched me in the face, or my wet hands plunged into an electrical socket.
 

‘What do they call you, boy?’ I ask, still out of breath and wild.
 

‘Harry, sir.’
 

‘Okay, Harry, let’s do a bit of walking. I’m an old man, my legs won’t carry me with you so fast.’
 

I cannot tell him he is me all those years ago, or that I am him all these years later. Am I being shown my life, or is the boy playing with his destiny? We walk the shore, and that’s all there is, the simplest thing of us upon that shore, the building of castles and the climbing of dunes, but mostly it is walking; our arms about each other as if we’ll never be cut free by knife or lightning. Does he want to know his destiny, the kind of man he will make? Does he know, and has he known since that first moment that we were, in fact, not strangers to each other? Perhaps he knows very well who I am, his spirit having grown older, and if he does, how well he is coping with it. A boy meeting his destiny and playing with it as though it were his best friend. Has he brought me to him, knowing I’m dying? God, I bathe in his laughter as he bathes in mine.
 

‘Is there some grand scheme of things, young Harry? Have you got a plan?’ Instinctively, he seems to know where I’m taking him.
 

‘Sure, mister, I’m going to sail right over that edge, do you see that?’ He extends his arm outward, pointing very definitely. ‘That’s where I’m going.’
 

‘What’s over that edge, Harr. What will you find when you fall beneath the horizon?’
 

He stops still for a moment. ‘I guess I’ll find out what’s on the other side of the world, right?’
 

‘And you have to know that? You have to know. Is that it, Harry? And what do you think might be on the other side of the world, do you know…or can you imagine?’
 

‘I have to imagine… I have to imagine because no one has ever come back….that’s it you see…that’s why I have to go…because no one has ever come back.’
 

‘And you think you will?’
 

‘No, I guess not, but at least I’ll know. There’s a lot of sailing to do just to get to that edge, isn’t there, mister?’
 

‘Yes, Harry, a lot of sailing, a lot of storms, but there will be calmer times as well, days that come down golden, nights of purple velvet when your heart cannot take all the beauty in, and stars hang just above your head, there are those places to pass on the way to the edge, Harry. You know that, don’t you?’
 

‘How do you know that, mister, you talk as if you know?’ He says, looking at me intently.
 

‘Well, boy, sometimes we get brave enough to sail near the edge without going over. As you say, no one who went over ever came back….but one did come back, Harry, He came back to show us that there is no fear there, it’s all here. Fear, heartache, sadness, and joy, unimaginable joy is here, too, but once you’ve found the courage to venture over that edge, everything comes right.’
 

‘Is that what this guy told you… Everything is right once you’ve sailed over the edge?’
 

‘He didn’t just tell me, Harry. He told all humankind that.’
 

I cannot say what whirling feeling possesses me now, standing here on the shoreline. Just that when the boy walks toward the waves, I instinctively follow. The music of the wind quiets, and the serenity of it all is leaving me. I’m seeing something of the way it all should be. I’ve been touched and nurtured by the whole of the human race, glimpsed what lies beyond, and am less fearful, caught up in the whirling, celestial tide of humanity, and my life captured in the hand of a small boy.
 

We wade peacefully toward the horizon.