A Wanderer’s Journal: Prologue
We are all wanderers upon this Earth. We have but from the time of our births to the time of our deaths to investigate this earthly realm and the universe in which it is afloat. As of this year of our Lord, 2024, I have wondered thusly for a mere 62 years. During that time, I have married the love of my life, have had two children with her, and have buried them both. Our daughter, Kaitlin, died after supposedly winning a two year long war with brain cancer. The chemo and the radiation treatments destroyed her immune system and her body’s ability to fight some infection she got that went septic and sent her into cardiac arrest. She had her last radiation treatment on July 31st and died on November 6, 2012. It was a short-lived victory. Our son, John Cody, was so very private. We do not really know just how the loss of his sister affected him. He simply would not talk about it, and on April 13th of this year, at the age of 27, he took his own life. No one seems to know why!
John Cody was a quiet homebody. He loved to read, wild harvest in the forest, cook, and write music. He seemed to be perfectly at home in his skin. Obviously that was not entirely so. I always wanted to talk to my son about… “things”, but he was so closed – so private. He would simply walk away. He would just… wander on… on his own. John Cody had a Christian upbringing. He knew about Jesus, he was even baptized as a child, but I don’t think he ever really met Jesus. He didn’t seem to really know Jesus on a personal, intimate level… as best as I could tell with him being so closed off to discussion about things of such a private nature as that. I just don’t really know.
Two days after his passing, his mother and I went to South Carolina to settle his estate and affairs. He had moved up there to be a whitewater rafting guide – totally out of character for him. We were blown away when he told us he was leaving Mississippi and going to South Carolina to do this, but we were proud of him and for him hatching out of his shell and leaving the nest of our home. He was in his fourth year up there and had made many friends in the rural backdrop of southern Appalachia. An impromptu memorial was arranged two days later at a local tavern, and we met some 60 of these friends. We were amazed at the stories they had to share with us about our son. They told us things we never knew about him. They introduced us to a son we never really knew.
Nearly a month later, as I was backing out of our driveway to go to work one morning, I just happened to notice the motto on the South Carolina license plate of my son’s car that was parked directly in front of me. It said, “While I breathe, I hope.” That hit me in a place I didn’t even know I had. I dwelled on that motto for days. I kept thinking, “If only John Cody had seen that motto on the day he… did what he did, maybe he would not have done what he did.” Then around 2:30 in the morning on May 11, after staring at the ceiling for a long while, I got out of bed, put a pencil in my hand, and this was the result:
A Different Man
They knew not my son as did I.
They knew a different man.
My son was closed and distant.
He was far too private to know.
His engaging smile was uncommon,
and his quick wit was slow to show.
He rarely stretched his helping hand.
Similar poles of a magnet we were.
The closer we got, the harder he pushed away.
That I never understood!
I raised a son I never knew,
and then I met his friends.
They introduced me to my son,
but that was four days too late for him.
This man was open and honest.
His steel sharpened others’,
As his wit quickened theirs.
His helping hand was eagerly stretched,
and his magnetism properly poled,
In the four short years he wandered there,
he gathered within his wake
a group of friends to be envied and revered.
If but only he could have foreseen
the assembly at The Tavern that night,
and heard the stories and laughter and seen the tears,
maybe he could have also seen
that there was no reason for his end to come
under that tree and at the end of his rope,
for as it is known where he wandered and roamed,
so long as there is breath, there is also hope.
Aaron Wray Hawkins
3 AM – May 11, 2024
This poem was inspired, in part, by the moto on the South Carolina car tag:
“While I breathe, I hope.”
The next day, May 12th, I went to Office Depot with my wife to get some supplies for her office. While there, we came across this journal with the Tolkien quote, “Not all those who wander are lost,” on the cover. It was meant to be, I guess, for we’re having the extended version of that quote put on his tombstone: “All that is gold does not glitter. Not all those who wander are lost. The old that is strong does not wither. Deep roots are not reached by the frost.” We bought the journal book, and I began journaling to John Cody the next morning. This… is that journal. This is a journal of the things that I wish I could have said to John Cody while he was still wandering this Earth. Perhaps if I could have said some of these things to him, he would have wandered on… only not alone.
This is a journal of the perspectives I hold and have gained over the 62 years that I have wandered this Earth. I am nothing but a wanderer who has stood on the shoulders of giants to get this glimpse of that which I see. I thank them for holding me up, allowing me these perspectives. I only wish that I had had the chance to share them with John Cody – to have helped him to stand upon the shoulders of giants before he sank so low that he felt he had no choice – no hope – no breath. I failed him in life. I journal to him now… afterward… to help fill the void left by his absence from this Earth that he used to wander. Please realize, as you read this journal, that these are my perspectives. Yours may very well differ, and that’s fine. We all stand upon the shoulders of different giants, in different places, and at different times. We are bound to see things… differently. And now… A Wanderer’s Journal.
A Wanderer's Journal 
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