In this weekly column I quite often lament the swiftness of
the passage of time. In fact, I’m sure that I have even described science’s
interpretation of how time actually slows down and speeds up and why it really
seems to speed up as we age. It’s all in the perception, I believe, but
regardless the reasoning…time flies! All too quickly.
For example
I cannot believe that it was already twelve months ago when we were sitting on
a beach in Peachland, BC on Canada Day, 2015, watching an unbelievable
fireworks display over Okanagan Lake. Where the heck did that year go?
It is truly
unfathomable, as well, that we are approaching the 4th anniversary
of the untimely passing of Bobby Vargo. Four years already? Wow. The family has
just wrapped up the fourth edition of the Bobby Vargo Memorial Slo-Pitch
Tournament and what a success it was. Combining all of the things that Bobby
loved into one event is a great way to honour his too-short lived life. He
loved family, he loved friends, he loved sports and he loved community and this
event brings them all together. And on top of that the tournament’s events
helped many community organizations raise some much needed funds for their
groups. Over $16,000.00 in total, I’m told! What a great legacy. Congratulations
Vargo family.
Again,
overstating the obvious, but it was a decade ago that Kyle MacDonald made the
last of his fourteen trades from One Red Paperclip to a house in Kipling! Ten
years! How come it seems such a short time ago?
Mind you, the
whole summer of 2006 was full of excitement around Kipling. Among other events,
that was the year that Pat Beaujot discovered the pedophile harbouring two
young males in an abandoned yard near Pat’s home and it was also the summer
that the Kipling Industries building north of town completely burnt down and
then the momentum of the “One Red Paperclip” phenomenon led to that summer’s
wrap-up with “Saskatchewan’s Biggest House Warming Party” on the Labour Day
Weekend in Kipling, which led to the auditions for a part in a Corbin Bernsen
movie, which our son Nolan won, by the way. What a summer to remember!
Can you
imagine that it really is forty-six years ago that Dad and Mom and their three
youngest children moved to Kipling? I guess it is. What a pivotal moment in my
life that turned out to be. I was thirteen years old at the time and I didn’t
want to move here at all. We had lived in three other communities prior to that
and I was sick of moving and finding new friends and fitting into new schools
and everything.
You know what, though, it didn’t
take long…mere weeks, in fact, before I had made some new friends and by the
end of that first year in Kipling I was entrenched. I was home. This was it.
The friendships that I made in
those first weeks in Kipling were to form a tight-knit circle of friends that
remain very close to this day. Life, geography and other factors have made the
visitations fewer and fewer but when we do get together the years fall away and
we are transported right back to the good old days of fun, fun, fun.
The core peer group started with six
friends and we expanded and contracted that number over the years but the six
of us were always linked as one. One of the core members of that circle was
Brian Gallagher. Brian is the first one of the six of us to have passed on
after his recent battle with cancer. Another fine example of “the good die
young”. This one stings. Bad.
We can lament the too-fast passing
of time. We can complain that life is too short and there is never enough time
to enjoy all the things we want to enjoy. If there are any positives that can
be taken from losing friends and family members like Bobby and Brian it is that
we have to make the time to do the important things in life. We have to make
the time. I know that we pledge these things every time we lose a close
personal friend or family member but we must. We must follow through because
before you no it…time has slipped away.
“Time is what we want most, but
what we use worst.”- William Penn (1644-1718).
No comments:
Post a Comment