by Art Redwood

Created on: June 23, 2008

The crowd would all be huddled in church, not a sound creeping from any one as they all waited with baited breath to hear the final words that came from the man, that many called dark, and broody.

He had loved and lost his innocence early in his life, and the ramifications of that time where to be felt by his family and fiends for the rest of his days, he could when he wanted to be, personify bright and cherry, and was often amazed as to how many individuals separately said to him, that he should have been a counselor, as he had a way of listening with empathy, yet he felt that none ever truly understood his primal motivations or intentions, and thus lamented the emotional separation that he felt in many aspects of his life towards his fellow man.

He understood what Winston Churchill was alluding about when he talked about his dark dogs, as his also where a constant presence in his life although he could say the one ray of light in his dark existence was his wife and children, and although he could write volumes, of witty and wonderful words, he was wracked by the guilt and remorse, that he felt when he could never truly share his feeling with them, and lamented this greatly for the many missed opportunities in his life to correct this most glaring of his oversights.

The masses where expecting a great volume of notes to hit the pew as the chosen speaker made their way to the podium, and all where surprised to the lightness of the single sheet a paper that made it's way from the breast pocket of the speakers jacket, it was uncharacteristic for one who could say a thousand words to describe a sunset, or keep his long suffering mate awake at night with his insights into the condition of humanity, or any one of a 1000 other observances, that took his interest.

There was not a sound as the page unfolded and the speaker drew breath to say the words that where so beautifully laid out on the page, as he had to type and print them out before his end, his writing for a writer was atrocious, and was often told he should have been a doctor what that hand writing.

So out of respect for his long suffering grade 12 English teacher and for the rest of his life where possible he typed everything, and had volumes of printed material at the ready, to be cast to the waiting world at a moment notice, as he was hungry for the time where he would be noticed and accepted for the writer that he wanted so desperately to be all his life, and had to the best of his knowledge prepared something for just about every eventuality.

But alas that was not to be and everyone knew the intention was always there it's just the delivery and the vehicle suffered from a prolonged and conic case of procrastination.

Yet they loved him as one could with what they where given, he was closed and shy, yet witty and loud when he had had a few, and they loved him or he thought they did for it, rather than for the real reason that he simply existed in their realm and he meant something to them, he was a friend and a confidant, and everything that he could be, yet always in the back of his mind he wanted to be more, yet now that time would never come.

The speaker exhaled as the first words left his lips, and he said, to the assembled crowed the words that inhabited the creases in the fold of the piece of paper, and it said

It's better to have tried and failed, than never to tried at all.

And the assemble crowed nodded silently, what a fitting end, for such and complex and misunderstood individual...

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