The Going Of TB The Elder

 TB The Elder is gone.

He slipped away from us last night.  My brother in law The Outdoorsman called in a voice I have only heard him use two times before, and only upon death.  We know nothing at this point, other than what the home told us:  he just stopped breathing.

I was headed out to Old Home this weekend on Thursday anyway, so in that sense I was already on my way. It will just not be the visit I expected it to be.

Nighean Bhan said it best:  It was not a surprise, but a shock none the less.

I am sure that I will have more to say on the matter at some point - as I write this, it has been less than two hours since I was notified.  

In a lot of ways, he was perhaps not the reason this blog continued to be written, but he was a reason to sustain it because in writing it, I wrote of my life to him in a way I was not otherwise able to share with him.  In that sense, he continues to live through the writings here.

I do not have great deal to offer at the moment, so in lieu of something more deep or personal, I can only offer Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Mayhap my father has touched The Happy Isles of Heaven.  Certainly his soul is now free of a body that would no longer co-operate with him the way he would have wanted.

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,

By this hearth, among these barren crags,

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and fee, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel:  I will drink

Life to the lees:  All times I have enjoy'd 

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those 

That loved me, and alone, and when 

Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known—cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honored of them all,—

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains; but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill

This labor, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and through soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.

Death closes all; but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;

The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.