There is an expression about writing - that sometimes the most important things for a person to write are the worst things to publish. That may well be true; this whole article may be a horrible mistake. There is, however, another belief that people read to know they aren’t alone. I’m not sure I hold to that belief, but I do know that words have meanings, often larger than the person who wrote them will ever understand. When I started this column I thought that it would be little more than a forum for funny stories generally at my expense. Somewhere along the line to me “Flyosophy” stopped being a tongue-in-cheek joke and started to mean something more. Reading this article you will gain no insights into fly fishing, and it may prove to be a mistake putting it up, but today at least, I feel it is important that I do so.

All fishermen, fly fishermen especially, understand the life cycles of insects and of fish. We use common terms: the spawn, a spinner fall, a hatch - all mundane words to describe miracles.

Occasionally…generally only when the fishing is either very good or very bad, we take a moment to recognize what is truly happening all around us for what it is - a miracle. Whether you believe the universe is a collection of random sub-atomic collisions or holds the very fingerprints of God - life - all life - is miraculous. If you never realized this then you simply haven’t been paying attention.

Of course, this is only one perspective, there are others. For example, some people look at the birth of a child as the single greatest miraculous achievement of which a human is capable. Others look at the same event as a horrible failure of contraception and promptly dump the mistake in the nearest trash receptacle. Some people think a premature baby born at 6 months should be given a name, loved, and provided with the very best medical care available…that this child is a person and every effort should be made for him or her to live and achieve their potential. Others feel that a baby at 6 months ought to have its tiny skull opened with a pair of surgical scissors. In a society like ours, devoid of any consistent sense of responsibility or uniform moral decency who can say which perspective is right? Everyone is entitled to their opinion, God bless America.

I stood at the gravesite of my niece and weeks later my nephew. There were some flowers, their were some candles, a number of friends and relations trying to say what no one knows to say, a poster with a picture of the baby, and a tiny white coffin - smaller than the box my last pair of sandals came in.

I’m no stranger to loss, but this was different. Normally when a member of your life is lost you can remember the times you were with them, stories you heard of them, or if it is a relative of a friend that you did not know personally you can lend an ear to the memories that they share of them. With a baby there are no memories. I found myself mourning ideas - like I imagined where I’d take the twins fishing, or toss them around at the beach. I even thought about the photos I’d be able to take of them holding sunfish with ear to ear smiles, and every uncle’s obligation to teach the pull my finger prank. I was remembering and mourning things that had never even happened. Heck I’m not even an uncle given that they were my cousin’s kids. Nothing I was feeling was real. Yet, looking at a baby coffin, what image could hold a starker realism than that?

Then there was the helplessness. I’m not sure there is anything worse than not being able to help the person you most want to help.  Physical pain is nothing by comparison.  I felt it, and looking at my brother’s knuckles I know he did as well. Still, I believe it was only the merest fraction of what their father felt. A man who would have done anything, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could have done. It was then that I had the single most inappropriate thought of my life. I thought about the Maury show - and the countless men who danced when they learned they weren’t fathers or lamented when they were. Justice doesn’t exist. Here is a guy who wanted nothing more than to have his family to work and struggle for them, to literally give his life for them. But no, that’s not part of the plan.

Of all the platitudes and clichés you hear and say, the ones about what was meant to be irk me the most. So these children weren’t meant to be, but frigging Osama Bin Laden was…or I was for that matter. World really needs a big oaf to go fishing and eat cheeseburgers.  This could all be arrogance as well.  Honestly, to think that world needs something - or the universe for that matter needs anything from me…or from you.  Think about that for a minute…if these kids weren’t meant to be…than you were.

That’s a pretty big “if” though. A two-letter word that can define a person’s entire out look on the universe. I want to believe it. I would love to say definitively that I know the world and the children of the world rest in stronger more able hands than mine. Yet, if I said that today it would be only words, perhaps a wish, but not something that I know or believe without doubt. Faith is a gift, to some freely offered, and to others hard won. I just know that at present it is something I lack, and too precious to claim otherwise. Probably the downside to living inside your head and thinking over-much, thoughts drown out what the heart may already know.

Again it is a matter of perspective. My cousin and her husband believe strongly in the metaphor of the butterfly. That death is not an end to life, but a transition from one form to another. Allyson and Owen are now more beautiful than ever, happy and at peace. They have no pain, only we do and we are big enough to handle it. I hope that is true. If they do look down on us, then maybe a goofy uncle who goes fishing too much does have some purpose.

2009 has been a bad year for me, a lot of personal turmoil not the least of which caused by the simple fact that my little family keeps getting littler, as my long-suffering mother likes to phrase it, “All my grandkids are dogs.” In a real way, the best part of the last couple months were the weeks I was homeless - well between houses - brushing my teeth in a public bathhouse and sleeping on the beach, it happens.

One perspective could be that this is the start of a downward trend. Opportunities that had been open are now closed; friends and family I had known are gone for good. Nothing needs to change for a perspective to. This could just as easily be seen as the start of a new era. A lot has been learned in this year, and things which were blurry are now sharply in focus. Things taken for granted are now given their proper due.

Miracles are easier to see.