The Island, St. Margaret’s Bay, NS.
Some of my conversations with Ty go over and over in my head. During the first part of August Ty and I were driving to work every day- I’d drop him off either to jump in with his friend he worked with or at a jobsite. One morning Tim McGraw came on and Ty reached over and turned it up and sang the words of the song. I remember thinking how I was glad he was starting to listen to country music again. Later one of his friends told me he sang that song while he was hiking up the side of John George’s mountain ( not really a mountain but it had some very steep rock cliffs). Funny how suddenly he was jumping out of airplanes and just the weekend before gone scuba diving (things he wanted to do for a long time). Late winter he and a friend walked across the ice from the lobster pound to the island over a frozen Atlantic ocean. I almost passed out when he came in laughing and told me what they had done. It was something he always wanted to do, he said. Three days later I drove by and the ice was completely gone. Was Ty living like he was dyin’?
First jump, Waterville, NS 2005
Live Like you Were Dyin’ by Tim McGraw
He said I was in my early forties, with a lot of life before me
And one moment came that stopped me on a dime
I spent most of the next days, looking at the x-rays
Talking bout’ the options and talking bout’ sweet times.
I asked him when it sank in, that this might really be the real end
How’s it hit ‘cha when you get that kind of news?
Man what did ya do?
He said
I went skydiving
I went rocky mountain climbing
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I gave forgiveness I’d been denyin’
And he said some day I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dyin’
He said I was finally the husband, that most the time I wasn’t
And I became a friend, a friend would like to have
And all of a sudden goin’ fishin, wasn’t such an imposition
And I went three times that year I lost my dad
Well I finally read the good book, and I took a good long hard look
At what I’d do if I could do it all again