Getting down the beach together, ten feet at a time

Last week -- for nine days actually, Japhia was in the hospital.  Several times a day I traveled between home and hospital.  Folks at the church put up with my absence, and a good friend stepped into the pulpit on Sunday to give me a break and some help.

At the same time my brother-in-law, in Vancouver for an annual week-long golf-trip vacation with two good friends, was lying instead in limbo in a hospital there with a gallstone, pancreatitis and an indefinite prognosis, with my sister stuck here without any rational way to be with him.

And from my son I learned that my first wife had fallen and broken her arm, and he was suddenly having to be big-time caregiver.

What a wounded, limping bunch we are.

And in the midst of this I happened to see a 4-minute video of an elderly man and his wife walking back to their car after an afternoon at the beach.  His name is Duncan, hers is Cathy.

And the walk goes like this.  

Cathy sits in a folding beach chair.  While she sits, Duncan carries a second chair 10 feet ahead, and sets it in the sand.  Then he walks back to where Cathy is sitting, takes her by the arm and leads her slowly to the second chair, where she sits down.  After which he goes back to get the first chair, carries it past where Cathy is sitting, and sets it down 10 feet farther on.  Then he walks back to Cathy, takes her arm and helps her walk to the new chair ten feet along, where she sits down.  Then Duncan walks back to the vacated chair, carries it past where Cathy is now sitting, places it in the sand another ten feet along, and goes back to help Cathy to this chair.

Over and over again. Ten feet at a time.  Until they get to where they need to be.

Cathy is sick and weak, dying of cancer.  She has an oxygen tank that Duncan carries for her while he helps her walk, and places on her lap when he goes to move a chair.  Ten feet is all she can walk at a time in the sand.

Cathy died seven months after the day of that walk.  Duncan and Cathy did not know they were being video-taped, and when Duncan was asked later about their walk, he said, "When she got sick, it was just the right thing to do.  She loved the calmness [of the sea], and she loved putting her feet in the water."

In the video, all the while he is helping his wife walk down the beach -- him walking fifty feet back and forth for every ten of hers, Duncan is whistling and perfectly content.  The woman who shot the video and later met Duncan says, "Here he was slowing down and showing her kindness, like he didn't have a care in the world, like that was what he was created for, just to help her along."

If you want to see the video and the fuller story of Duncan and Cathy's walk go to http://www.cbc.ca/radio/docproject/how-a-viral-video-brought-two-strangers-together-just-when-they-needed-each-other-most-1.4626772