The Silver Sail

 The old man woke up. He’d had that strange dream again. All he could ever remember was that there was a very flat and calm lake. It had a sort of gleam to it and in the distance there was a sailboat. 

 He liked that boat very much. He’d always wanted to have a boat of his own but the distinctive feature of the boat is that it had a silver sail. The sail was so bright that the sun would reflect from it and at the moment of the flash of the sun reflecting off of it he would wake up. This happened every time. In the past it had bothered him because he wanted to know what happened next. 

 He had been a story teller his whole life and like any story teller, there has to be a good finish and it’s also good to have a nice start - and it’s even better for it to be a good story all the way through.

 So on the one hand it bothered him and on the other hand he really liked the image of the calm water, the sailboat and the silver sail. “Anyway,” he thought to himself, “…how many times have I had that thought.” 

 He rolled out of bed and Q rolled with him. Q was his dog. Well actually, to be perfectly honest, Q was his families dog who had taken a shine to him. 

 They called him Quintus Rex and he thought that was a silly name for a dog but he didn’t say so to the family because they thought it was a funny name and he didn’t want to rain on their parade, so to speak. He was kind of an unusual looking dog and so every time they’d say his name they would laugh looking at him. 

 The old man felt that Q, as he called him, was a fine looking dog - he was just different. “And so,” he thought, “ well, just because he’s got big floppy ears and one of the ears is much shorter than the other doesn’t mean that he should just be continually laughed at. Dogs like it when people are happy but if they’re the butt of the joke eventually they don’t like it too much, just like human beings.” 

 So the old man treated Q different and he didn’t call him Quintus Rex even in front of the family, he always called him Q. 

 Later in the day after a nice family breakfast, he looked at Q and said, “Want to go for a stroll boy?” Q always wanted to go for a stroll with the old man because it was fun and so of course he looked happy and wagged his tail.

 They lived in a neighborhood where, if you had a well-behaved dog, that you didn’t have to use a leash and so they both left the house - no leash. 

 Q looked up happily at the old man as they walked along. The old man liked to say, “Heel,” and of course Q would do that but he looked up at the old man with happiness because the old man could understand and recognize that he was happy just to be with the old man. 

 They walked down that slow slope towards the lake. It was a nice lake. It was fairly big. You could see the other side but it was at a distance. 

 When the old man was younger he used to be able to walk around the lake but now that he was older he was happy just to walk down there, think his thoughts of his life and have his good friend Q with him.

 The old man sat on the bench that was closest to the lake. Most of the benches were behind the path so that you could have chats with people walking by. The old man, when he was younger, used to sit on those benches for his Sunday walk but now that he was in his advanced years he liked to sit near the lake because most of his friends whom he used to see there had already passed over. 

 So he sat near the lake and Q sat on the ground near him. The old man would usually look at Q and say, “Do you want to go play, boy?” When he would do that Q would go off and play with the other dogs or sometimes splash a bit in the water. This time the old man didn’t say that. He looked kind of sleepy and Q thought - maybe I’d better stay. 

 Q looked out at something that caught his eye on the lake. He wasn’t sure what it was and he glanced back at the old man. He wanted to see if the old man had seen it but the old man had shifted on the bench. He wasn’t sitting up any more. 

 He had in fact leaned over to the side and now he sort of slowly descended to the rest of the bench and looked kind of like he was sleeping but Q knew what it was. To be sure, Q put a  paw up on the old man and he knew. Dogs have a way of knowing these things. 

 Q looked at the old man but again something caught his eye. It was a flash of light from the direction of the lake. He turned around and looked directly at the lake. 

 He saw another flash of light and there out on the lake was a sailboat. It was a nice one. Not too big, just a nice size, and it had a silver sail.

 Q was happy. The old man had told him about his dream several times. Again he looked at the old man laying on the bench but somehow he knew the old man wasn’t really there any more and Q got happier and excited. 

 He wondered whether the old man’s dream had come true and he looked at the boat with the silver sail. He saw something. He had good vision like dogs do. 

 The old man was on the boat! He was waving at Q. Q hopped up in the air with joy and when he landed the boat was gone. The silver sail was gone and the old man on the boat was gone but dogs can accept these things and he knew that the old man was happy and Q was happy for him.

 He looked back at the bench. A couple of people had come over and he looked at them. One of them said, “It was his time,” and glanced at Q and Q nodded - it was his time but Q knew that it was the next time for the old man.

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We all will have next times, I believe. Goodlife to you all.