HELLO!

When it comes to the creatures of Creation my favorites are dogs, woodpeckers, seahorses, crows and ducks. I have no idea why. And why do I love ducks and yet find geese so repellent? As for crows and woodpeckers, it is not how they look and more their sound. On Mondays, when I don’t work from home but at the office (by myself) I will spend my lunchtime, with a book, sitting on the nearby bench by the mailboxes, looking at the ducks. I love how ducks waddle and their colours.

On Friday I dropped in the office to visit with a grieving family and help them celebrate their loved one. As is my practice, I asked them to share stories of Laura with me. Her husband brought a piece of paper with her wishes for a funeral, most of the writing focused on one story, her duck “Buttons”. One day she witnessed a female Mallard duck lay an egg. Once abandoned Laura took the egg, had her husband build a “blanket” incubator that she discovered in her online research, and was blessed to witness the baby duck hatch in front of her eyes. That newborn would follow Laura wherever she went. Later, she took “Buttons” to Hope for Wildlife so the duck would have a more fitting life. Some months later, when the couple returned home one day a duck was in their driveway and followed Laura everywhere. It was “Buttons” again. While they pondered what to do next, “Buttons” disappeared for good, they never saw the duck again. But this one memory, of all her 67 years, is what Laura shared, on a piece of paper, as she contemplated her life and death.

When I heard this story it reminded me of this Mary Oliver poem:

“Mornings at Blackwater” (Written by Mary Oliver)

For years, every morning, I drank from Blackwater Pond.

It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt, the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be, darling citizen.

So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbour of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.

Later, when I returned home and worked on the bulletin and the sermon for the funeral (no one in the family is able to speak, they are too upset, so they have asked me to summarize their stories and feelings) I thought of Dean, a local artist who I met 20 years ago when I bought his duck painting at an art show. And then…during the COVID lockdowns, I met Dean again as he was volunteering at a local foodbank. I reminded him of his duck painting and how it is featured prominently in our home.

“So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbour of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.”

Peace, Kevin