Sunday Drive: The Bridge Builder

Thanks to all my Truckbuddies who responded to my post about Cody. Your kindness touched my heart.

I don't want to dwell on all that - life moves on, you know, and we all just have to take it as it comes, light or dark, rain or shine. But I will share with you one more thing that happened, and I can't explain it. Make of it what you will.

A few weeks before Cody died so unexpectedly, I had emailed him a link to a poem I'd stumbled across and thought interesting. He didn't remark much upon it then, but several days later, he surprised me with a gift: he had printed out the poem in a nice format, and put it in a frame. I thanked him, of course, and hung it on the wall by my desk, though secretly I wasn't sure why he had picked this particular poem to frame, out of all the other things we shared with each other.

Only after he was gone did I begin to get a glimmer of why.

An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
That sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near,
"You are wasting strength with building here.
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again will pass this way.
You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide -
Why build you this bridge at the eventide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."

At the bottom, Cody had added:

To Russ, January 19, 2005
For no other reason than
I love
you
- Cody

I still keep it right here by my desk, close to me.

(Poem by Will Allen Dromgoole / Painting: Bridge of Faith by Thomas Kinkade)