Emily

In the town of Delta, not far from the Rideau lakes system, is a beach and a campground. My parents' farm was only about two miles way, and when we came up to visit my parents, sometimes we would camp there, because we loved camping. At the Delta campground, the skies are big, and the pines are tall. On the beach one night, I looked up at a cloudless night sky, and I swear I saw the whole universe.

There is a small graveyard beside the campground. I often wander through cemeteries; my parents once owned one (on the farm), but that's another tale for another time. When I wandered through this one about ten years ago, I came across a grave with more feeling than the others.

On the tombstone, it identified the twenty four year old woman as having been born in Montreal, and the name with the most prominence was not her last name, but her maiden name, "Atkin." At the bottom it said, Taken into eternity November 23, 1987. But none of these things was what struck me.

Amidst the fresh flowers lain on her grave, was a seven inch carved wooden heart, with the letters "Emily" carved into it. There was more love burned into this monument than any stone in the graveyard, because this monument was fleeting and fragile, like all of us are.

In my mind, I continue, from time to time, to pay my respects to this Emily I never knew. I had been to the beach to swim many times as a teenager. I wondered to myself if I hadn't been on the same beach, or in the same store in town - maybe one where she worked - at some point in life. Had our paths ever crossed at any point?

It would have been an honour to share a moment with someone so loved that ten years later, they would carve a heart, inscribe her name, and leave it for her with fresh flowers in the whistling wind by the beach.