For Stephen

It's funny how people drift in, and out, and then in again, into your life. Even our blog family is like that... we have drifted apart a bit, in part due to the popularity of facebook, in part because we all simply have such busy lives. And when the time is right, I am sure we will all drift back together again. I do miss you all. But the person I am thinking of right now is Stephen Mcgarva. Stephen is a man I went to high school with. He was a year or two ahead of me, and I remember him quite clearly, though surely we never said more than a few words to each other back then. After all, I was a "minor niner" and he was "that cute guy in grade 11!" But he was one of those older kids in school that always stuck in my head, and over the years since high school, he has drifted past my little island of life and I have wondered how his own life turned out. Enter facebook, and a reconnection. We have chatted a few times, he is happily married with a lovely wife and two incredibly beautiful daughters, an artist, an activist for animals, and appears to me, and by his own words, very happy. I have taken impish delight in telling him about the lovely valley September we had, describing the perfect blue in the sky, the crisp in the air, the colours of the leaves blanketing the wetlands in a patchwork quilt of beauty. And always he laughed, and called me dreadful for making him miss his valley home. Of course, my teasing was often born of good natured envy as he has been trekking about Scotland, and wouldn't I just love to be in his shoes for a few days! But a few days ago, Stephen's beloved stepfather Blair died, and I feel his grief as though it were my own. And that is where the funny comes in. Not funny, HA HA, but funny, sort of odd in a bittersweet way. A few conversations on-line, a short reconnection from an almost non-existent connection in high school, and yet I feel so very close to Stephen, as though we had been friends for years and years, never out of touch. While the internet has in many ways caused changes that are not so good in our world, it has also created paths to people we would otherwise have perhaps never met, like all of us, as well as paths back to people that were once in our lives, and, it would seem, never truly left. Stephen, I wish I could say something, anything, to help ease your grief right now. I wept openly when I read your email, and my heart broke a little to think of your darling girls not having more time with Blair, nor you having just one more visit with him. Keep him close in your heart, keep that image of him riding off with Bugsie and Jake, a trio once again, doing what they love, without the constraints of mortality to pen them in. The best of my love to you and your family... the best of my strength to you personally. I will spend today in my corrals, clearing out the weeds and getting them ready for our own horses, knowing Blair is watching over all of us, guiding my hands and heart gently. I will stop a moment, and breathe deep, and keep his image safe in my heart. With love, S