Sad Story.

She gives lifeless dead hugs, she is not interested in other people, only herself. 

A Californian Adventure.

I was sat on a wooden bench writing a story when he approached me. I had been oblivious to the world around me for the past few hours until he made contact with me, asked me what I was writing about, I told him.

He look disheveled, as if he had been living rough for quite some time, underneath his unshaven brown beard he had a kind face with memorizing blue eyes.

We began to get to know one another.

I was in California visiting a friend; he was on an unforeseen life-changing journey that had arisen as a result of his father’s sudden tragic death.

His Name was Rudy. 

After Rudy’s fathers recent passing, Rudy cleared out his father’s belongings; among the belongings that had belonged to his father, Rudy found a box of memoirs. He had not known of this boxes existence prior to its discovery, the box had been buried underneath various sorts of clutter that one collects when living in the same house for years on end. 

The box was wooden, dusty and extremely aged, inside were all sorts of types of memories all in different forms; photographs, letters, cassettes, train tickets, airplane tickets. Inside the dusty wooden box Rudy found a scroll of paper filled with all different types of desires for adventure. His father had written a list of all the things he wanted to do in his lifetime, various wants had a black line crossed through them, Rudy assumed this had meant his father had completed that particular desire. 

The list was long and uncompleted; there were still many black lines that needed to be put through desires on the long list.

As Rudy’s father had tragically passed away, his list was to remain forever uncompleted. His father had been murdered as a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I could feel Rudy’s devastation and could sympathize with his newfound sadness. Rudy has decided to dedicate the rest of his life to completing his father’s adventurous wish list, since he knew his father was now unable to do so.  He read the list out loud to me, it was all very exciting, and it reminded me of my very own list at times.

Rudy had not done many of the things on the list either, he was extremely excited to fulfill his father’s wish list as well as experience all these new things for himself. Rudy’s father’s death was practically recent and so he had not begun to complete the thrilling list just yet. The list was extensive, to name a few it read; Skydiving, hiking mountains, kayaking down waterfalls, skinny dipping in the ocean, this one caught my attention in particular, I asked him if he himself had ever skinny-dipped. He said he had never. I asked him if he wanted to go rite there rite then, the ocean was only a 10-minute walk from where we were sitting.  He could not believe my request but he said he wanted to. No time to change our minds, we began to run to the beach.

Hearts beating our of our chest, sweat dripping down our faces, beach full of people sunbathing, playing volley ball, having beers, listening to music, cuddling, laughing, eating, reading; we wasted no time undressing ourselves, we were in such an energized state of urgency, adrenaline racing from all the exhilaration. Naked. We ran in to the clear blue ocean, we swam in to the distance where we remained for a long, long period of time. The smile on Rudy's face was one of complete happiness, the biggest, most happy, true smile I have ever seen.  

Through conversing with Rudy on that wooden bench, I could feel how sadness had consumed his mind, his life. He had not felt absolute happiness for a while; I wanted to help him have some light back in his life by helping him to begin on his newfound journey to completing his father’s adventurous wish list. It gave me pleasure to see him draw his first black line through one of the desires on his father’s wish list.

Here is to Rudy and his adventures, may he continue to fulfill his fathers wish list and so much more.