Paying My Respects to a Giant

When I was a little girl, ten years old, I was given my first fountain pen.

Back then, when I was a child in the late 80s/ early 90s, fountain pens were messy contraptions. You were given a bottle with ink and you had to dip the nib of the pen in the ink and suction ink into the pen's cartridge. It was a messy process. Bottles fell over. Our fingers were stained. The first ink from the pens were blotchy. But we enjoyed using our fountain pens because of the ink's elegant dance on paper.

These days though, I hardly write with pens. Instead, my fingers dance on keyboards. Today, they dance as I muse over the fragility of life.

Yesterday, a friend reached out to me on Instagram to let me know that a former colleague of mine, a supervisor who had played a pivotal role in my professional development, had passed away. I was stunned. Though it had been years since I had last seen the gentleman, he had for a time been such a huge figure in my life, that I never really spared a thought for the moment when he would no longer be here.

He was easily one of the most intelligent people I knew. Growing up on our island which was at one time a colony during a period when access to education was limited, he was one of a select few to win a national scholarship that helped him to gain an advanced education well above that of many of his peers.

In his professional life, he gained a coveted spot working in our country's oil industry and worked his way up the ranks- a skilled politician and polished communicator with such superior writing skills that it was no surprise to anyone when he moved away from working among the plants of our refinery to take up a senior desk job, leading the organization's communication efforts.

He was compassionate and like a father figure to me, and when my life was at an all time low, he took me under his wing simply on the basis of the fact that I had at some time in my past, a connection, however tenuous, to his daughter. We didn't always see eye to eye, that's for sure. Sometimes, I guess, even giants have feet of clay, and I am no saint either. But without this man's aid and kindness, I could have fallen into an abyss.

When he saved me, I had made a string of bad decisions and was teetering over the edge. This man could have said, it's no business of mine, and it would have been true. But he didn't. He said, come and I'll help you. And he did. He was a protector. He was a mentor. And with a stroke of the pen, he saved me. And he didn't have to. And now that he has transitioned, I can't help feeling sad as I think of his sometimes sneaky, always clever smile; the steepled fingers; the eyes that peered at you over his spectacles as he taught.

If ever there were a way after one transitions to look back and read the words of those they interacted with, I would want this gentleman to know that I loved him and however things turned out, I am thankful.

I'll close on this final thought, my friends, and that is that life is short. Sometimes we think we have all the time in the world to retrace our steps, to let someone know we love them or appreciate them, to look up and savor a moment, to breathe, to just spread our arms wide and soak in the sun or dance in the rain or look up at the clouds in the sky or simply look across at the next person and say and do all the right things we should say and do... when we don't. We don't have all the time in the world. And so, it's important to remind ourselves, I think, not just in moments of loss, not just when there's a singular event that makes us pensive or reflective, but rather as much as we can every single day, to consciously think that time is fleeting and moments slip by before we recognize them, and it's important to make the most of those moments, to enjoy the best of them before they're all gone.

Mr. Hamza, sir, hats off to you.

Lead image sourced from Pixabay