The Mariner: Rewrite of a Legacy

by Mimi Haigh

For all my life I loved the ocean and her gifts; especially whales. As a child I would play in the pounding surf, sail across breath-taking oceans of splendor, or walk within sandy pillars of dunes at twilight and all the while dream of whales.

Until I journeyed away for a while, my heart was always one with them. After needing to move away from what I considered my best work, my grown children, and moving back to all I missed and what had captured me once again, the ocean and the Great Ones residing there, The Mariner found me.

His name was given to him by his father at his birth, as the Mariner was born on the night of a note-worthy Nor'easter. His namesake suited him well, as he possessed the uncanny ability to blow into a space as quickly and as surprisingly as our famous New England Nor'easters and then exit the same way; leaving great changes created along the way, shape and form of the status quo left in the wake of the stormy onslaught.

Being in the Mariner's presence was like being caught in one of those historical, blowing gales. I understood one does not try to control or capture such energy. Instead, one should bask in the blended feelings of excitement and wonder at being caught up and then surviving the path of such an enigma of the Universe, a force that can create destruction as easily as it can create miracles.

Sadly, that was the caliber and soul of the Mariner, an ever-changing soul who had chosen to be an ever-changing force of nature.

That night after docking, the Mariner walked over to my table, sat, and began discourse, addressing denizens under study through ongoing work at the Center which he, his wife, whom he had lost to breast cancer, and another scientist had founded.

I imagined whales affirming their admiration and gratitude for this man’s work by drifting gently past the Mariner with raised, bonneted heads graciously nodding their approval, as he hung before them off the ship's bow, snapping pictures for posterity.

Certainly an appealing man, whose words blended with rich chuckles, and with a voice that resonated like the gentle, deep rumbles whispered by Neptune himself. Words that generated passion and encouraged my heart to open to his heart, and feel what he felt.

I remember when I hoped he felt Love. I have forgotten when I felt hopelessly lost in the Mariner’s Dark Seas.

One night, his face reflected sadness. He dismissed my concern with a frown and an abrupt wave of his hand, but later addressed my insight by methodically sharing the heart-wrenching loss of one of his dearest friends. As he described events leading up to the loss, I wanted to touch his face and hold my hands over his heart. I wished desperately that we could be alone.

I felt he had called me this time because he was in need of healing, but he could not, or would not, admit this to me. Instead, he diverted questioning to my work “healing chakras and auras.” When I started to answer his query, he chuckled and dismissed my words, calling me a “charlatan” while stars twinkled in his watery, blue eyes.

The Mariner teased that I could always “bait him,” as his good friends could, to keep him coming back into their lives. This time with my promises of good “hassock time” and red wine, by a simulated fire. Initially, our conversation was light-hearted and comfortable. Hours and bottles of wine later, our conversation became laden with flashing moments of self-reflection and confessions to each other; snapshots of another lifetime.

His words were brilliantly reflective, so as always, “stretched the elasticity of my brain,” as he called such talk. His hand on mine, staring into the flames of the night, we quietly rested. The Mariner exuded an intelligence that I felt was his strength. He argued that point, as “his instincts and uncanny sense of knowing created his successful life.”

I think he reluctantly and fearfully began to fall in love with me that night, because he had begun to remember what a loving heart desired more than fame and public recognition: intimacy and the opportunity to just understand that some things are just meant to be.

That night, after “surprisingly” pouring thoughts from his vintage bottles probably named “Never-Shared Secret Thoughts,” he gently placed the tip of his finger on my forehead and begged “to know what thoughts I now held there at this very moment.”

When I replied playfully that I was “even crazier about him,” sadly, he could not bear my answer and began a conversation that was more of a courtroom kind of defense, refusing to “hear that I was crazy about him when he was not crazy about himself.”

His weakness, I feared, was not just wine, but that his powerful mind could turn inward, causing him to be prone to a dislike of himself and to paranoia, an inability to find right relationship with himself at these times of his own undoing, as he associated Love only with Pain.

Although we continued to meet, write and call, he eventually began to gingerly report that time with his “Boys,” the whales and the programs under his care, his chosen global causes, really most of the world, owned him and called him back to duty. Cowardly and disappointing correspondences included “local field work had begun, so little time to write or visit, but Fear Not, I am here.”

I had to accept that all the words and contact he shared with me now were just like the light and heat cast by a flickering candle's flame. Eventually both are lost when the flame is absent.

I was despondent when forced to see this Mariner; a Pain Body unwilling and lacking courage to chance Love. Still, I sent “bait” one last time to the Mariner he had forgotten he once was, the Mariner I would never forget I once loved.

Mimi Haigh is a high school special education English teacher and examiner in Kingston, Massachusetts, as well as a certified Reiki Master and practicing intuitive empath. Currently, she is completing her first book, Journey Such As This, which contains wondrous reflections of the cascading waves of grace she has experienced while practicing mindfulness, awareness, and understanding. This practice renews, transforms, and opens her heart to the spiraling "Pillars of Light", of The Great Mystery which is the source with whom she co-creates the words she pens in her book.

Besides private parties and phone readings this summer she will offer intuitive readings before the Jon Stetson Ladies Only Psychic Party Monday nights at the Cape Codder in Hyannis. www.capecodderresort.com

Visit Mimi 's website:
www.mimihaighwisdomofgrace.com