The poem 'Beachcomber' by George Mackay Brown has that funny and sad realism about life and its limitations and disappointments, but realism laced with hope and that gentle defiance that says life is more than we see, more than we can know, and in surprising ways, at least as much as we can imagine in our best moments.
We all learn, eventually, that those surprising moments of memory, triggered by a post-card, or a piece of music, a place we once shared with someone, hand-writing, or whatever, are best negotiated by acknowledging the sadness of who is lost to us, but also holding them in the light of thankfulness for their so being with us that they have become part of who we are.
"Love is stronger than death," and George Mackay Brown's poem, that last line, uses one of the classic images of surprised joy, and hope that is imagination tempered by trust in the God whose gift is life, whose nature is love, and in whose grace we live and move and have our being.
"What's heaven? A sea chest with a thousand gold coins."
Aye, and then some.
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