Thoughts on a Memorial

Photo - Rod Reilly

 

What makes a good man great? The building blocks, what are they? The answer defies me.

Have you ever known someone who was subtly and inexplicably different from everyone else, and in a good way? Can you explain why they were?

Sure, there are good people out there; the way your daddy is or was a great man. The best father on the planet. Yet, most likely, he isn’t the Merriam-Webster definition of great that eludes me. Instead, he, like many others, exist as bluebirds in spring. Look for them and you’ll find one; a unique specimen, a bright spot on the day, but not the birds on my mind.

Perhaps the perfect definition of a great man is one that is itself undefinable. It’s merely something you understand without thought. That’s most likely it - I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it.

Ron Alexander was such a man. His memorial provided the proof.

A varied range of people, great in number, is not driven to span latitude, or longitude, for a man of succinct definition. Migrations of this type occur only when undefinable forces compel souls to move - forces they feel, and must honor.

 

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The Ship

What is dying
I am standing on the seashore, a ship sails in the morning breeze and starts for the ocean.
She is an object of beauty and I stand watching her till at last she fades on the horizon and someone at my side says: "She is gone."
Gone!
Where
Gone from my sight that is all.
She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination.
The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her, and just at the moment when someone at my side says,
"She is gone"
there are others who are watching her coming, and other voices take up a glad shout:
"There she comes!"
and that is dying.

Attributed to several authors



*The poem above was something Ron was known to send to friends who were suffering through great losses.