The Carolina Skiff roared across the chop toward Paul's Mott and the cross, our guide skillfully spacing the bow and stern to the wave intervals. Our charter captain cried out, "There are the sails coming into view now!" We whirled in at high speed to the spit of land, mostly oyster shell and rock, boats already tied and anchored along the shore.

Have you ever had the sudden feeling of coming home to a place you know so well, yet never have touched? A sudden feeling of familiarity and family swept over me as our boat slid in expertly alongside John Hargrove Wright's double ended canoe. The Texas 200 that I had read of so many times and heard of in stories and lore was there before us and it just looked like a place I had known forever, exactly as though I had seen this same scene a hundred times over and over.

Mike had come back to his friends, the place this story all began so long ago sailing the Cartopper untested across Corpus Christi Bay and capsizing to become a legend of the TX 200 as he sailed into the beach that evening. This was Mike's last trip and I was glad I had made it with him and our daughters, Malia and Michele, grandchildren Jack and Madeline. Mike deserved this last voyage, the respect he had earned. I also think he'd have loved the ride on the Carolina Skiff, a speckled trout catching machine that had pulled in its limit that morning, cleaned and stored their catch before taking us out to the boats. Mike caught hundreds of specs out in the Gulf as a kid, later as a man, fishing with his father and uncles who lived to fish and only worked to go fishing.

Jumping out of the skiff and into the shallow waters of the tiny islands beach, the cross, made of an anchored mast dominated the point's horizon with three flying burgees, one for each man being honored, each with the skipper's name emblazed. Stark against the sky, the cross seemed the perfect memorial, perfectly placed and silhouetted.

At last late that afternoon Dan Rogers of almost Canada began his service to the three men who had sailed their last trip, their last TX 200, Jim Leonard, Dave Ware and my husband, Mike Monies. Written and enacted by Dan, the words rang true and resonated. It was a difficult role Dan played, ringing off his shipmates, his friends. Most could not have done so. Dan's voice cracked and faltered, yet he made it through to the end.

Dan Rogers leading the memorial ceremony.

Many asked if I wrote the poem, "If You Remember Me". I did not, I wish I could write so well. It was written by an old acquaintance of Mike's and mine in New Orleans, Jim Metcalf, in 1975. It is in his small book of essays and poems, "In Some Quiet Place". Jim is also gone now but his works live on with their well chosen and poignant words, just as they made him beloved in the days his poems closed out each night's television broadcasts.

After my mother and Mike died, we held a joint funeral in Louisiana for them. Just as Mike was part of my life for forty-eight years, so was my mother part of Mike's life the same number of years, we traveled together and many met Pauline here at Sail Oklahoma. The day she died she was hoping to be going back to the Port Aransas plyWooden Boat Festival this year, worried that Mike was not getting to sail in the Everglades Challenge in March. For a deer hunting woman who distrusted yachts and boats it was a long conversion but she had been captured by the small wooden boats and those who built them, just as I had. She loved each and every one of you she met and finally realized what it took to build a boat, talent, tenacity and stubbornness, all characteristics she admired.

Had I found the poem earlier I would have read it at Mike's funeral but I came across the two slim volumes in the office among all the boating books he was unpacking, dusting and cataloging back onto their shelves. Two browned index cards marked the poems. I do not know if I placed those there or if Mike did, both of us used this method to mark passages or quotations. But the poems had spoken to me long ago and I loved them so.

“I hope, if you remember me at all,
It will be for what I was,
not for what   
you would have had me be,
or what others thought.

I hope that you will say
I knew much of love
And loving,
And dreaming dreams
That stayed alive as long as I did.

I hope you will not say
That I was strong………….
Or weak…………..
Without elaboration.

Say I was weak enough
To cry
When roses died,
To smile when others bloomed
To take their place.

Yet strong enough
To be unashamed,
To admit
To being gentle.

Say I often walked my path alone
In winter’s cold and barren places,
Say I played the loner’s role,
But please add,

I was never lonely.”

There was a second poem marked as well in the slim volume. Just two poems. "The Gift of Love" was the second with the index card marker. It was not as yellowed and old as the first one marked.

“I have heard men say
The greatest gift of all  to give
Is the gift of love.
I have heard,
But I do not understand.
I am not sure it is a gift;
A thing
To offer as a present.
I do not believe
There is the power within us
To choose……to decide
Where our love will go;
To consider possibilities,
Then make a list
And add names to it,
Or cross them off,
And in the end proclaim:
“To these I will give my love……….
So these my gift bequeath.”

It cannot be so.
For if it were,
There would be no broken hearts,
No songs of love in vain.

It would be such a simple matter
When we received a gift of love,
To be fair
And give ours to the giver
In return,
If we had the power………
If we had the choice.

I think we do not give our love,
It is taken from us.
Sometimes by those whose love we’ve taken,
Sometimes by those who take it
Without knowing……….
By those who do not care.

The ability to love
Is the one true gift.
It is God’s gift to all of us,
But he gives us no
The power
To dictate
Where it goes.”

Mike was a much loved man, loved by his friends, by his family, loved by me beyond all reason or rhyme.

His memorial continued, Dan sang and recited Fiddler's Green, we lowered the flags and rang the ship's bell to ring off each man who would sail no more with the crew, sailed off into the sunset one last time on a voyage of eternity that would never end. It was a beautiful service. The girls and I, along with some friends, threw ashes into the waters, leaving a small part of Mike forever there to join the TX 200 fleet each time it beached and camped.

The girls and my granddaughter passed out brownies and Cowboy Cookies to the captains and crews, we hugged friends and exchanged loving words. Then back into the Carolina Skiff and an even faster run across the choppy bay, the skiff pounding down with every other wave and the grandchildren and I whooping in joy with the sheer power and exhilaration of the trip. Mike would have enjoyed the ride I think but he was back at Paul's Mott I hoped where the boats were anchored, camping with his friends and telling tall tales of the voyage around a campfire.

Love goes where it will and remains where it will. It is not our choice. A part of Mike will always be with me, just as it is with Paul's Mott. A life of half a century together cannot be erased. Yet, like the fast ride back to the shore, so the living have to move on, leaving the past, daring the currents, the waves, the unknowns of the future. Our voyage continues, we cannot remain at Paul's Mott.

Jackie Monies
“Notes From the Boat Palace”

https://groups.yahoo.com/group/SailOklahoma/

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