“No tears in the writer,” Robert Frost famously noted, “no tears in the reader.” The reverse is true as well, as two readers recently proved by making my eyes well up to overflowing.
The first email came from Susanne Hopkins, from Maine, in greatly belated response to a column I wrote back in October of 2018 about Audrey and David Mills and their enchanting lecture about lobsters at the tiny Mount Desert Oceanarium Lobster Hatchery in Bar Harbor.
More than crustaceans, however, my column was really about an octogenarian couple that had been married 62 years yet still came into focus like honeymooners. “The lobster couple,” I wrote in conclusion, “is actually a pair of lovebirds.”
“Lobster Couple” Audrey and David Mills were married 64 years.
Two and a half years later their love affair that had now celebrated 64 wedding anniversaries touched me again when Susanne wrote a few weeks ago: “Dear Woody, I am the granddaughter of David and Audrey Mills – my grandfather went to be with his Heavenly Father last Tuesday. My daughter and I stumbled across your column during a Google search and I read your words to my grieving grandmother this morning and it brought happy smiles to our faces.
“I’m so grateful that you visited the Oceanarium and that you could see the beauty in not just their museum, but also in my very special grandparents. As their granddaughter, I am so proud of the lives they touched in the 46 years they ran their aquarium. Your column was a beautiful testament to who my grandfather was. He always let us know how much he loved us, and I think in this world that can be quite unusual.”
Tissue, please. I felt like I had tossed a bottle with a message corked inside into the ocean and after more than two years it came bobbing back in the waves and washed up onto the beach with the loveliest reply imaginable.
Shortly later, a second bottle washed ashore and I needed another tissue. This time the message came from much nearer, from Ventura, from Joyce Rieske. She also emailed belated in reply to a column, this one from more than a year ago, headlined “The Beauty of Sunsets.” In short, I marveled over our local coastal sundowns that often seem to have been painted by Monet using a palette of flames; mixed oils of reds, golds and oranges.
Wrote Joyce: “Dear Woody, My husband Cornelius – Connie – and I have always looked forward with anticipation to our Saturday Star. As long as his vision was good enough, Connie read your column himself each week. However, when his eyesight began failing, I read the Star and especially Woody to him.
“Last year, on February 9, 2020, I reread him your lovely column of February 8 about our wonderful Ventura County sunsets as Connie was experiencing his final sunset. That final sunset was a ‘pyrotechnic display’ as you wrote about and I was actually reading your words at his passing. You gave us the perfect ending to a perfect life of 62 years of marriage. Thank you for being a part of our life together.”
The misty-eyed thanks truly is mine to Joyce. Learning that one of my columns provided new widow Audrey Mills a moment’s reprieve from her ocean-deep grief was one of the most touching compliments I have ever received, but to imagine my written words being the final thing Connie Rieske heard, and in his beloved wife’s sweet voice, I will never receive a higher honor.
Nor will I ever take a Monet-like sunset even the least bit for granted.
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com