To Ease the Passing of Time

I remember much more how I was feeling inside than the details and the scenery. It was near the Saguenay River, in a small town not too far from Chicoutimi called Sainte-Rose-du-Nord.

I was in the boy scouts. We were there for a long weekend in October for what we called our autumn camp. We had walked all day under the blue sky on a thick and soft carpet of fallen leaves, between the hills and through the valleys. It was cool and the air around us was fresh and clean.

It was almost sixty years ago. I was at the age where you are no longer a child and not quite a teenager yet. We were walking and singing, and we did not really care where we were going. At night, we sat around a campfire, under the moon and the stars, and we sang again. Before going to sleep, we prayed. We asked God to bless us and our families. We slept in a barn not far from the village. I could smell the hay. We talked a little bit and then we were silent. At that moment, I felt that I was a part of the universe, that God was watching us as we were falling asleep. I did not have any specific plans or dreams, but I knew that I had my life before me to do whatever I wanted and to become whoever I wanted. It was a good feeling. I thought that if I could feel that way for the rest of my life, it would be great.

After the autumn camp, I went back to my regular life and everything that was in it. It was not perfect. My father was an alcoholic, and that meant a lot of stress and anxiety for everybody in the family. Nevertheless, I think my father was a very good man. If it was not for him, that weekend near the Saguenay River would never have happened. He was the chief of our troop of boy scouts, and he is the one who planned and organized that autumn camp. In spite of having problems with alcohol and working on shifts (day, evening and night on alternate weeks), my father found in his heart the energy and time to give probably more than what he could afford to give. He had his first heart attack at 45, had a stroke ten years later, and died at the age of 57. Wherever my father is now, I feel connected to him. He did his best with what he had and I am very grateful for that. He showed us that love and compassion are more important than fame and fortune, and that you should always look up to the sky and the stars to find your way.

Those memories of that weekend near the Saguenay River came back to me a few years ago when I heard a song. That song is really a poem that the singer put into music. That poem was written by a man who lived in a different country, in a different surrounding, in a small town with a strange name that I don't even know how to pronunce, but what he wrote in his poem is exactly how I felt when I was walking behind my father near Sainte-Rose-du-Nord a long time ago.

Here’s the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1SwvWFceyM

“We were boyish dreamers in a world we did not know.”