Sometimes it all hits at once, large waves crashing upon the bow of your ship as you begin plowing through the water again. The storms are wonderful things, but they are filled with minutiae that can be troublesome.

Over the weekend, I attended an Annual General Meeting of the residential community and after I had told the directors a few times that they weren’t giving time to assess some changes they wanted to make 3 times, they still tried to do it even when I pointed out in the bylaws that it wasn’t enough notice. My conscience clear, I let them have it. It felt good in the disturbing way that anger feels good, so I retired to my own thoughts.

On Sunday I encountered a German who I drank some beers with for a while. We talked about the world and how Germans see it, and how Americans see it, and how Trinis see it, and all the other places where we had both been. Between both of us, we had close to 60% of the world covered, and it was a fun and challenging conversation about the state of the world.

Monday came around, and I lost a friend who was a bit older than me. It shocked me; I didn’t expect him to go so quickly with so much going on. I’d just updated to Windows 11 on my writing machine, I was playing with the new writing software, and suddenly I’m trying to find out what hospital my friend had gone to. Before I found out, I found out he passed away and… well.

So I spent a little time with his family, and since they have such a great support system in that family, I felt sort of useless and left. They know I’m around if they need anything, but otherwise I felt a bit out of place and didn’t want people to feel awkward either.

He lived a great life, and it was a very interesting one. He had a quick smile, a fun laugh, and was as authentic as they came. I treasured him. He was always busy seeing about something or the other, and I wish we had spent more time together.

So it’s been a busy weekend, and while I haven’t been writing I most certainly have been living, and being. These experiences round us off a little, make us see things differently, and are of very great value. They come with pain sometimes, as some growth does, but what is life without growth?

We do the best we can and we move on, looking back now and then to see what we might have done better.