Under the crest of a wave

Lofty thoughts while waiting for a coffin to arrive, I had to get a notebook out as I considered the events of the last few heady days. Why, less than a fortnight ago we were in Studland Bay while a foaming sea raged around and threatened to engulf even the dunes where we pitched our camp. I took my camera out in its plastic bag so I could get a pic of the waves crashing about, including this one that towered above me, then took the camera to shore, and ran back into the sea to fully* engage with nature. The sand shelved steeply down where it was normally a flat plain (a bad sign), and doing a little CRASH towards a wave that did a BIG CRASH towards me, really embracing that wave, I found myself swept off my feet, sucked downwards, then upwards and backwards in a spiralling circular movement leading ultimately to the Isle of Wight, (ooooh! that sucking feeling will stay with me!) with the sense that the sea had picked me up and was going to do with me what it would. I was about to be recycled! I shouted to t'owd man 'DAVID! SAVE ME!' but then I managed to get my feet onto sand, or the wave relented and dumped me there temporarily, and I ran like hell, struggled towards him yelling 'GET OUT! It's a very dangerous sea!' Good man, he obeyed me, immediately went to shore, leaving me to continue having fun in the waves, relieved in the knowledge that he was safe.

So as I sat in a little village church today waiting for a funeral to start, I remembered this moment; I looked around and thought about the vast mass of humanity which seemed to me like a wave, of which I recognised myself to be a part all of a sudden. Now that 'My Life's Work has had some affirmation, it seems that everything has made me what I am - the people I have been influenced by, the people that love me, the things I may be naturally good at, and the things I can't do like remember or understand history or whether the sun goes round the moon or vice versa or anything philosophical, doing theology and not going to art college - and even my deafness that has dogged me since repeated attacks of mumps in childhood and of which I have been so ashamed and still makes me cry because I know I have missed out on a lot of life because of it, and will there be any so-far hidden gains from this? Somehow I didn't care any more, I felt content to be part of that big wave that is humanity, that all together we make up that big wave, full of bits of this and that, but all together, all in it together, and that I am the sum of what all these have made me, and that now at my great age I must make a big effort to take some kind of control in that moment my feet are on the sand, before I really AM recycled and indistinguishable from the great mass of salty decaying matter. For a moment or two that day in the sea and today, I felt, as well as believed, that being me was not my fault, and better still, that being me was good.
*Split infinitive? You're going to complain about that? Are you telling me I should have shouted 'GET OUT and promise me you will never, ever disgrace my memory by splitting an infinitive!'