In a silent way, it's about that time.

With his personal affairs now in order, and his only possessions left behind in his white weatherboard house, the old man cast his boat off from the small wooden jetty for the last time.

The man was 89 years old, and his frail fingers and deteriorating strength had hampered his efforts to prepare for the voyage. Yet despite a lack of physical strength, his stubbornness and determination had helped him complete the task, and by mid-afternoon the boat was bobbing gently up and down in the water.

He had left his clothing folded neatly in a pile in the soft sand underneath the shadow of the yacht club’s awning, and the old man now wore nothing but an old pair of sky blue gym shorts and a gold chain that hung loosely across his leathery hazel brown chest.

The man looked towards the top of the boat’s mast, awaiting the breeze that he knew would come, and almost immediately the sails of the yacht ruffled softly as a fresh off shore wind filled them until they swelled round and taut like the smooth belly of a pregnant mother, and the boat started to move forward.

The familiar creaking of ropes and canvas gave the man a calming reassurance that his voyage would be comfortable, and this feeling of contentment inspired a small walnut smile to crack across his tanned and wrinkled face.

As the little yacht headed out into the bay, the old man clasped the lacquered wooden tiller and directed the boat southward towards the bay’s heads and the open sea. He looked back over his shoulder and watched some small children playing on the beach, and his gaze moved up from the sand to the stony cliffs and to his little house on top of the hill. He watched that little house for as long as his failing eyesight would allow, before he turned his back on that life forever.

* * * * *

With a steady wind now behind him, the old man sat down and pulled a creased photograph from his gym shorts. The photo itself was faded, and was barely distinguishable, but the old man could clearly make out the face of a rosy-cheeked woman smiling pleasantly at the camera from a red and white striped lounge chair in the garden.

For a moment the old man was back in that garden. The smell of flowers and freshly cut grass filled his nostrils. Elizabeth, his newly wed wife waves at him from her chair, cigarette poised delicately in one hand and a chilled glass of Chardonnay in the other. A Miles Davis record crackles quietly in the background, and the man finds himself humming softly to a melodic trumpet solo, and slapping his feet to the slap of the double bass.

Memories appear and fade away as easily as the ebb and flow of the tides, but for the old man this single memory was everlasting.

‘How quickly life passes’ the old man says quietly to himself. He had seen enough men die in the war to understand that death was something feared only until one reached the peaceful state of self-fulfilment. The photo had reminded him that his marriage had been the foundation of his life, and that he and his wife had struggled through miscarriage, bushfire and illness and yet had still remained as steadfast as the day they first met.

It had been three months since Elizabeth’s death and the old man had never fully recovered from the loss of his beautiful friend and partner. Although he had watched her die as he sat by her bedside clasping her hands tightly and knowing that she was content, he had felt the emptiness almost as soon as her smile had faded into the strange peacefulness of death.

A sudden ache in the old man’s chest dragged him out of his thoughts, and he slipped the photograph back into his pocket.

The boat was now far from the shore but not quite out into the open sea. In a sudden rush of energy he quickly pulled hard on the tiller and the sails started to flap loosely as the yacht turned into the wind and came to a halt.

The old man left the helm and peered over the edge of the railing into the dark blue water lapping at the sides of the boat. He shuddered. He wanted to drown. He wanted to drop into that freezing cold water and just let everything go. He would be free of the emptiness left by Elizabeth’s death. Yet now the memories of his wife’s smile had overcome the horrible desire to die.

“What am I doing?” he said aloud. He knew Elizabeth would have always chosen life over death. She was so vivacious and full of energy when she was alive that he knew he could never end his life this way. It was selfish and denigrated the way that his gorgeous wife had fought so hard to preserve her own life.

He turned the boat around to face the marina. He was not yet at peace, his life would still go on.

As the boat cut through the waves towards the shore the ache in the old man’s chest grew worse. A sudden pain in his left arm caused him to let go of the tiller and he stumbled forward, clutching at his forearm before he collapsed into the bottom of the boat amongst knotted rope. He felt an enormous pressure on his chest, and his breathing became staggered and more forced as his gasped for air. He was almost completely paralysed, but in the final silent seconds of his life he rolled over onto his back and looked up at the sails and whispered.

“Elizabeth.”

Under the smoke screen of bottles of wine.

1000 Journals