A friend of mine and his wife have had a tough couple of years. I won’t bore you with their not-at-all-boring story (the medical part actually deserves a book) but last week, their self-built and locally familiar 30-foot-plus sailboat caught an errant spark and burned to the waterline. I sincerely hope it is the final chapter in their current litany of tribulations.

None of us are insured out here so this loss was felt not only in the hearts and minds of those who know them and knew the boat but it also made a pretty big dent in their equally as battered wallet.

You wouldn’t know it to look at him, tho. He’s handling it all remarkably well. Much better than I would.

Sad, really, that it takes adversity to bring out the best in people. (Ironically, hardship doesn’t work that way with me. Adversity just brings surrender, tears and a lot of crying and moaning. Usually a lot of sniveling, gnashing of teeth and blaming others,too, if I can squeeze it in. I like to think of those as my coping mechanisms).

Mind you, that suggests that he was not ‘the best’ before and that is wrong. R is a fine fellow. But mettle is forged, it seems, in battle and he has had his share of late. And yet his mettle is still shining. I think my tarnished suit would get even darker if it had all happened to me. I really need things to be easier, not harder. I would fold like a towel in Sally’s arms if things got really hard. Hell, I do that whenever I can as it is. I prefer the idyllic and not the horrific. Heaven is better than hell, ya know?

Which reminds me: it has been no walk in the park for his wife, either. She has had an issue or two as well, to say the least. For all the resilience he has shown in recovering, she has shown the same as well as strength, courage and grace – the load still got carried. Troubles don’t discriminate. The family has had a lot to deal with and she has been equally as tested and found capable if not more so.

Yesterday morning we went with a few other neighbours to help them rid the provincial park beach from the remains of the vessel. The burnt hulk was on the shore and the authorities thought it unsightly. We chopped and hammered and unfastened, we chainsawed, dragged and pried, and we basically just tore it to pieces. I had a brief sense of what being part of a savaging wolf pack and pulling apart an unfortunate deer might be like. It was brutal.

I called him last night to tell him what I was thinking…..

“So, like you mean, I get maybe a 6 out of ten or something on the manly scale?” he said.

“Geez, man, if you’re gonna call a guy with this kind of message you’d think I’d be due at least a 7 out of ten!”

He has a point. With a sense of humour like that, we can stretch to a 7 out of ten for him, don’t you think?