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Growing up with a father that always seemed greater than life was not always easy. He worked all the time.  If he wasn’t at Ordside Garage, he would be working on some other car for a neighbor or friend.  It was a rare treat to spend time with my dad alone.  One special Sunday I was invited to an adventure. We were to go to the Monterey wharf to see one of the last three mast sailing ships still working the coast of California.  I could not have been more than 9 or 10. We toured the ship just me and my dad.

It was amazing.  Tall masts with furled sails.  The hull was made of iron but the rest was all wood and rope. We toured through each berth and saw the cook in the galley. It was a wondrous time.  The smells and the sights were so much better because I was sharing with my dad.

But the tide was going out and we had to disembark.  So we watched as the brightly uniformed crew of that grand old ship pull all the lines in and set its grand white sails and moved into that arching blue bay.
It was going to San Francisco, its next point of call. That ship was an object of beauty and strength. We stood there until the white sails became nothing more than a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky came down to mingle with one another. Then someone in the crowd said, “Look, she’s gone”!

That day is often brought to memory.  My sometimes over shadowing Father, the perfect blue sky, and  while sails as they seemed to fall off the edge of the world. But it also brings to mind that exclamation from the crowd, “Look, she’s gone”.  But we must ask, “Gone where?” Gone from my sight, that is all. That grand ship with its large mast and hull was not any less strong or able to cut the waves. That ship was diminished size only because of my perspective.  That ship is “gone” because I can not see it any more.

My dad is no longer with us.  He has sailed over the horizon.  Is he gone?  I don’t think so.  He is just out of sight and never out of mind. In my golden years of retirement I often wonder how I will be remembered when I am “gone”.

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