I’m grateful beyond even my own ability to express
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- December 29, 2018
- 1456
It’s time to take stock of the year that was.
Personally 2018 will always be special because my wife and I got to do a lot of things together.
Sounds trite and tired, I know, but it’s true.
She’ll tell you how wonderful retirement is, and she’ll be speaking from recent experience. I can’t even imagine the relief of being out from under the burden of having to go to work.
Me?
I feel fortunate to still have a job. There were days and nights when I was sure I’d had enough, that what was being demanded of me was beyond my ability or willingness to deliver.
And yet I’m still showing up, doing my best, dodging the terrors in the minefield, trying to make a difference.
These are not the best days of my life.
I get that.
But they’re not the worst either.
And there’s something to be said for being able to drive to the beach once a week, for setting up a place for two just in front of the breaking waves, for enjoying the otherness of being together in a place that used to be reserved for major outlays of cash and time.
I try never to take the beach for granted, even as we revel in our good fortune and bask in the glow of a too-bright August sun.
Winter, such as it is in Coastal Carolina, has descended again.
The days are shorter, the smiles we share get us through the darkest times and there’s an implied bargain: If you want this (ocean days), you have to go through this (inland winter nights).
We arrived in the town we now call home in the fall of 2000.
Seems almost impossible that we’re marking our 19th holiday season in a place that hasn’t always been a perfect fit, a place where non-natives won’t be accepted until they’ve spawned a generation or two.
Or three.
And that’s fine with us.
All it takes is a few random acts of kindness and a lot of the doubts get washed away, at least for a spell.
You may already know about Hurricane Florence and how she crippled vast swaths of the Crystal Coast, inflicting biblical damage on homes and people, property and lives. Many folks have yet to recover and may never fully do so.
FEMA agents still haunt the town, appearing every now and again, just to remind those of us who got very lucky that, if not for a gust of wind here or a fallen limb there, our lives would have been seriously compromised.
Debris, wreckage and other reminders of Florence’s wrath line many streets and highways to this day, and no one seems to know when it’ll be normal again.
You hear that phrase a lot.
This is the new normal.
But — and now I’m speaking just for myself — it was a pretty good year.
For one thing I got to get back home for my high school class’ 45th reunion, an event that seemed out of reach right up until the moment when it suddenly wasn’t.
I’ve shared a few stories of what I experienced, most of them rated PG, but there was an undeniably fragile underside to the whole weekend, something redolent of mortality and an all-too-true reality that can only be expressed in this handful of words:
We may never pass this way again.
As part of the décor, the reunion organizers decided to include what can only be called a Death Tree. On its branches were hung pieces of paper with the yearbook photos and names of our classmates who had passed away in the nearly half-century since we all breathed the same air in the same classrooms and hallways.
I spent some time standing in its almost Dickensian presence, feeling a bit like Ebeneezer Scrooge as he wished to expunge the writing on his tombstone, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come peering over my shoulder.
The English major in me — the journalist who always wants to get things right — noticed a deceased friend of mine’s name had been misspelled.
Rather than allow the error to stand and not wanting to make a scene with one of the reunion’s already-burdened committee members, I pulled a ballpoint pen from my pocket, quietly removed the piece of paper and made the necessary correction.
No one saw me do it. I made sure of that. But I felt better.
That moment embodied my year.
It crystallized memory and sadness, offered a bit of hope and left no traces of who had been there and done that.
I take this column very, very seriously, and when you read my words, I consider it to be the ultimate compliment. After all, you have better things to do than to spend even a few minutes envisioning my world, my ideas, my life.
And yet you always seem to be there for me.
I cannot thank you enough for having ridden shotgun on this trip through 2018. You have made the ride memorable and made me feel a whole lot less alone than might otherwise have been true.
I’m grateful beyond even my own ability to express them in words.
Who knows what lies ahead?
Certainly not I.
The new year is a blank page.
I will do my best to fill it with words that matter.
To you.
Mike Dewey can be reached at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to join him on his Facebook page.