Meet Neal

I met Neal at a cheap motel in California.

  

It was a weekday, early, maybe 6 a.m. 
I grabbed some coffee by the kidney-shaped pool.

Neal sat at a nearby table, writing in a small spiral notebook. Except for a busboy, no one was around. I pulled out my brown leather journal. Neal spoke first, something about the blue sky.

Said he was in sales. Asked if I was a writer, that he wrote too, mostly poems. Then for some odd reason, I closed my journal, looked up at him and hesitantly explained why I had traveled 1,800 miles from home.

Thirty years earlier, my mother died and her ashes were spread in the Pacific. I came to celebrate her life, I said. I was nearing the same age she was when she passed.


Neal asked if I was nervous my fate would mirror hers.


My eyes welled with tears.

Neal smiled, but didn't say anything. 

The next morning, I headed downstairs for coffee. Every table was filled, but Neal wasn't there. An older Australian woman offered to share and moved her bags off an empty chair.

She said she was returning from a friend's European wedding. Said she stopped overnight in California to break up the trip. In the middle of her story, the sky turned dark.

Standing in front of the sun was Neal. He said he was checking out, late for his appointment, but wanted to give me something. He handed me four little pages, I recognized, he tore out of his small notebook. Still blocking the light, he asked me to read what he wrote out loud. I turned to the Australian woman, than somewhat embarrassed, I read:

At night,

I look to the heavens above and I wonder many things.

I think of what may be and often without answers, 

I feel a sense of loss.

So often I lament having to say goodbye so long ago while still in my youth.

There have been hard times when I sensed, but missed your physical presence.

That is still the case.

But today the cycle has gone round, the circle closed, and from this point, you are enclosed within.

You are no longer far away, but now especially near.

I look to the sky above and sense your presence and I realize you are not simply out there in the ethers.

I carry you within me and you are where I am.

I am that part of you left behind.

I will no longer feel an emptiness because you gave me life, you filled me up

 and now it is my turn to live my life where you left off.

The sentences, the stories you left are now for me to complete, not for you, but for myself.

When I am done, I shall be complete, with no missing parts, no unsung verse.

 And as I fill in the still blank pages of what will become of the story of my life, 

I sense you might read the pages in real time. 

And when I occasionally wish to seek your reassurance,

I shall simply look to the heavens above on a clear night, 

and I shall find it in the twinkle of your eyes 

and those who left before you as you all look down and smile upon me.

He signed it Neal Williams and included his email address. I never contacted him.

Two days later, I arrived at the beach later than planned. 
The sun sat like a smoldering thumbprint on the horizon and the moon hid behind a low cloud bank. In big gulps, the high tide swallowed the wide beach while a frantic wind whipped the wet grainy air against my bare skin. Halfway down the beach, I climbed over the sea wall and walked back to my car along the road.

I wasn't sad to leave. I knew it was time to move on.