Beyond the Blue

I have often wondered, how long after someone dies, should you keep their telephone number in your contact list – its been a dilemma for many years now.

I also have a problem with how people express the end of someones life.  By this I really mean when they say they have passed, passed on or passed away.  For me, that is a little bit too weak a phrase to describe the ending of a life.  People die, like all living things on earth, they die.  Do we talk about trees passing away, or the flowers in the vase on the window sill?  Nope, they die, just like our budgies, cats, hamsters, gerbils, dogs and any other number of living things we have in our lives.

The last time I checked a dictionary and as far as I am still aware, the word with the opposite meaning of ‘life’ is ‘death’ – Live and Die.

So today while sailing in the Med, Mallorca in the distance behind me and Ibiza getting ever closer in front of me, I was given a gentle reminder about names of the dead in my phone book.

Frank Sinatra and Luciano Pavarotti are a strange combination to offer me that reminder but nevertheless they did.

Our Chef on board, is a long time servant to the boss.  An old French dude with as much character as you would expect an old French dude to have, no, let me correct that, twice as much character as you would expect an old French dude to have.  He also has more than his fair share of Parkinson’s, not easy to deal with when you also have a large sailing yacht moving around underneath you.  Sometimes, the ships movement can be in time with Jean-Claude and he keeps a true line for his destination, other times, his chosen route can be twice the distance his eyes would have his brain believe.  To watch him with a kitchen knife is pretty amazing but equally frightening.

While we were on our little jaunt between Islands today, Jean-Claude popped one of his favourite CD’s into the player and we had some classical tunes on deck.  When it was my turn on the helm, there was a song that took me back a few years to a Church on the outskirts of Coventry.

The skies were spotlessly clear and only out-blue’d by the Mediterranean sea glistening all around me as the old crooner sang his version of ‘My Way’.  I instantly thought about Big Stan, my hairs stood on end and at the foot of each hair was a big goose bump and then I smiled as I remembered the entry in my phone book, and my dilemma every time I stumbled across it as to when I should delete it.

Well today, I think I finally got my answer – I will delete it when I am good and ready and not one moment before !!!