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“ I hear babies cry, I watch them grow

   They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know …

   And I think to myself,

   ‘What a wonderful world.’” 

George David Weiss and Bob Thiele

Just woke up from a nap, a few minutes ago. I was dreaming of my friend, Jack Willis.

Saturday a month ago, I had lunch with Jack and a few others who like to gather, Saturdays, for catch-ups and reflection. At 94, Jack was the senior member of our coterie, stooped in his wheelchair and murmuring like Eeyore about his various physical ailments and frustrations, but always alert with questions and observations, fervent in his far-ranging curiosity about what was going on in the world.

A week later, I visited him in a rehab facility. They’d taken him there to shake off the lingering effects of some sudden heart arrythmia. He seemed all right – enthusiastic about finishing some physical therapy, then heading back home to get back into his routine. We prayed for all of that, and I left him bright-eyed and wondering whether he wanted to eat the little apple pie someone had brought him at lunch.

A week later, I stood at his hospital bed, praying again, as I looked down at him, lying in his coma. The nurse said he was actually doing pretty well, considering, but they’d need to run some more tests.

A few days after that, he was gone. And then, one more week later, I was bowing with others to pray at his service of remembrance.

It was at the viewing, a few days earlier, that I realized I didn’t have enough to remember.

Jack had been coming to our Saturday lunches, off and on, for a couple of years. We talked about church, and politics, and music. Jack had sung in choirs all of his life, and he loved the old hymns. From time to time, I’d ply him for details of his past … how he’d gotten started in radio, where he’d enjoyed a wonderful career for many years, both as an on-air personality and program manager for one of the biggest stations in the Valley.

But he was shy about discussing his personal achievements, and reticent about going too far back down old trails. He was always more interested in what was happening now. He fairly ached with concerns for his country and its growing upheavals. He longed for reassurance that, somehow, our nation was raising up better leaders … that courage was thriving and wisdom was flourishing, and that it was only a matter of time, or one more election, before the world was set right again, to look more like the great land he loved and remembered.

At the viewing, his family had arranged some photographs on a back table, and put together a video. I was astonished, looking at pictures of a man – impossibly young, handsome, tall and straight – whom I’d hardly known at all.

The elderly, dignified gentleman I’d watched struggling to get his walker into the back seat of his long sedan had once ridden motorcycles. Traveled to far places and giggled with his wife and taught tricks to his dog. Stretched his long, lean form across the backyard grass, gazing up at the clouds with his dreams and reflections. Pushed his little girls on their backyard swing.

One of those girls – now, like her sisters, a senior herself – had framed a few words and set them on the table at the back of the chapel: “Thoughts on Dad, With Love.” I looked over the long list.

Mother Westwind and Little Joe Otter.

Pulling weeds on Saturday.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if Dad walked in right now?”

Chew your peas 30 times.

How you met my friend, Cheryl.

“Salt and pepper will cool your soup.”

Red soda pop and dum-dums at La Cucaracha.

Going camping – once.

Toots, Boots, Pospatu, and Poopnagle

Being born under my grandmother’s rose bush.

Beagle puppies.

Nervous boyfriends.

Dr. Zhivago.

Winslow.

The voice of God.

Jack Willis was a friend of mine. We shared a lot of lunches together. He never mentioned any of those things. And I didn’t know to ask.

Driving home that night, I happened to catch that song, “What A Wonderful World.” The line that struck me was the one above – about the babies, and watching them grow.

I have babies in my world now, beloved children of friends, and what a delight it is to see their eyes wide with wonder at the enormous world of sound and color spinning above and around them.

I suppose the song is right, as far as it goes. They will learn many things that I’ll never know. Many things … but not more.

They won’t share my interests, likely, nor my experiences, certainly. They won’t be changed by the relationships and adventures and moments that shaped me. They’ll have their own unique, crowded universe of all those things – a million atoms of information and identity that I’ll never grasp or fathom.

But then, I know a million things that they won’t, either.

At least one thing, though, we all come to know, in time: that life is an essentially lonely thing.

So much of what I know – of what makes me who I am – is walled up inside me, never to be seen or shared, even by those who know me best or love me most.

Some things, in truth, really wouldn’t interest anybody else; some, I wouldn’t know how to share. Some of it – a surprising lot of it – just runs too deep, in places hard to reach, even for me. That is the sadness and sweetness of life, and what makes each soul its own.

But I like to think that, in heaven, we’ll have time for more of those revelations.

Maybe we’ll be more interested, and know better what to ask of each other. Or, maybe we’ll all be busy sharing new adventures, so much more interesting than all that has come before.

Mostly, I hope – seeing more of Him – we’ll better recognize Him in each other.

Napping, I dreamed of Jack. In the dream, I had my phone: snapping pictures as he laughed with an old friend, and widened the eyes of two little girls with that rich, deep, rolling bass of his. He seemed so happy, and I was pleased to have captured a moment or two of his joy.

But waking, it was only a dream. I only have one picture of Jack.