Message in a Bottle
Good Morning,
I watched “Message in a bottle” again last night. It had been 10 years (1999) since I had seen it and many of the details over time had slipped away. Especially the ending, which I’m happy for, since I prefer not to know such things until they happen. Unrequited love is such a powerful human emotion and one I’m sure many never quite get past. Maybe we are not supposed to completely… so that the moment-in-time can live forever in our hearts to be softened over the years into a mawkish memory reminding us that we have lived, loved and lost. It is better regardless of the pain, I have heard that “Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all”. (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
I have always thought it would be fun to put a message in a bottle and put it in the sea. The dilemma… what would I say? I really do not have a reason like Garret in the movie to cast my thoughts into the sea. It would probably be something a bit more practical like my name and address and a request to the finder to contact me and let me know where the bottle was found. Not very creative, kind of sad in a way and maybe one of the reasons I haven’t done it.
It is too late now, (that hindsight thing again) but in retrospect, I think it would have been a great idea, when I had the opportunity, to put some of my portion of Carl’s ashes in a small bottle, maybe even with a note asking the finder to spread them where they landed. That way he maybe could have ended up in a place where only chance and the tides prevailed. It would have been a unique and creative gesture to do for my friend who always loved new adventures. Even if the bottle ended up smashed against the rocks on some distant shore, his ashes would still have achieved the original intent. It was early in the morning that I let his ashes sift through my fingers into the Pacific, while I remembered the good things about my friend and the times we shared. I suppose it is difficult to be creative when emotion consumes so much of our thoughts. I considered it selfish at the time to keep even the smallest vile for myself. After all it was my charge to put them in the ocean and also a time of letting go. Anything less would have hindered the grieving process.
I do not consider my friendship with Carl “unrequited love”, but I do think it was a friendship ended far too soon by death and one that I missed dearly. I had so much respect for him and enjoyed the too few times we had spent together. I haven’t had a lot of friends like him in my life and as time goes by there become fewer opportunities. True friendships are proven out over time and time is like anything else, a commodity. It is not “the loaves and the fishes” and there is a bottom in the basket of life.
So if you have loved and lost, well that is ok. As a matter of fact it is really good, for it means that you have experienced life, put it out there and had one of its greatest adventures.
Love, Dad
Photo Credit: Mykl Roventine