Vigils

 

Vigils

Noel Laflin

8-22-24

 

People leave gifts for friends who have passed. We see them along lonely stretches of roads sometimes or off to the sidewalk of a busy city intersection where tragedy struck - makeshift memorials put together as tokens of love, wanting, longing, maybe even a sense of guilt for not having been able to avert a loss.

 

Such is a memorial for a man who took his life beneath an old tree that I pass by frequently. It happened sometime ago, but fresh flowers and volatiles appear all the time.

 

Most of us don't know the circumstances that led to his decision to move on - it happened in the middle of the night. But friends and family continue to honor his memory with new candles, crosses, flowers, a baseball, and a small statue of the Virgin Mary that rests, oh, so naturally, in the bark of the old pepper tree.

 

Someone stole the baseball a few months back, but they didn't dare mess with Mary, apparently, as she was still there as of this morning.

 

Today, a hawk stood guard looking down from an adjoining shady tree.

I am not a praying man much of the time - I am not even a Catholic, but I say a prayer for a peaceful transition and even cross myself nearly every time I go by.

 

Today, I skipped the prayer and genuflecting, and just thanked the hawk instead for taking up the lonely vigil.

 

And I bet that no one messes with him either.