We Will Meet in Heaven.

An inscription carved into a deck chair
Found washed ashore some 2,000 miles
From the sinking of the Titanic.

Imagine being on The Titanic and being separated from your loved ones for the two hours and twenty minutes it took to sink into the Atlantic Ocean.

Imagine the feeling of the futility of your efforts to try to find and save them, all while ignoring the danger you are currently in yourself.

Imagine knowing that the forces at play are much bigger than you and no matter what actions you take the icy water is looming.

Imagine as a last-ditch effort, taking a deck chair that you could have used as your own floating device and throwing it into the frigid water in the hopes that it will somehow find its way to your loved ones so they could hold out long enough for someone to come and rescue them.

That really happened.

In 1912, a few months after the sinking of The Titanic,

a deck chair drifted some 2,000 miles to Nova Scotia

where Bessie Taylor found it washed ashore.

Under the deck chair was carved the inscription,

“We will meet in heaven.”

Bessie Taylor kept the deck chair in her family for years.

In 2016, after changing ownership a few times,

the deck chair sold at auction for $150,000.

A piece of a futile action by a person in a tragedy traveled many miles to new lands and washed ashore for someone to else to prosper from the event.

****

The phrase “Rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic,”

is often used to describe a futile action in the face of impending catastrophe.

An action that may seem pointless or insignificant that will soon inevitably be overtaken by other events, an action that contributes nothing to the solution of a current more significant problem.

At times I feel I am on the sinking Titanic and have been separated from my loved ones.

And my written words are the deck chairs that I throw into the ocean.

I hope the written words from my personal Titanic will weather time and the elements and will travel as many miles to as many new lands and wash ashore and be found by as many Bessie Taylor’s who will prosper by reminding them of the preciousness of life.

I have learned that sometimes in life when you think you are rearranging your deck chairs from your titanic, when you think you’re actions will have no impact or value, what you never realize is a part of your tragedy will wash ashore many miles away, in a different land and time and will become an invaluable gift to someone else. 

And that is not a tragedy at all.

Chapter Excerpt from soon to be released “Strange Angels”

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