Hope

This evening, the sky put on a show.

Not a grand, thunder-and-trumpets kind of show. More like a quiet, steady performance that rewards the ones who step outside and look up. The clouds were generous. Big, soft, drifting things with no particular agenda, just passing through, doing their cloud work. The mountains sat below them, patient as ever, like they have seen this all before and are in no hurry to comment.

I stood there for a while. Thinking of you.

Terry and I must have watched The Shawshank Redemption at least eighty-five times. I suspect it was closer to ninety, but who is counting when you are in good company. That line stayed with us. “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things.” We treated it less like a quote and more like a daily instruction.

You followed it well.

Even when your body had other plans, your mind stayed busy. You always had something lined up for tomorrow. Or the next hour. Or the next minute, just in case tomorrow felt too ambitious. It was a practical kind of hope. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just steady, like those mountains out there doing their job.

And then there was our nightly ritual.

“See you in our dreamland.”

Simple. Reliable. No paperwork required.

That was our place. No limitations, no negotiations with a stubborn body. You could walk. You could run. I imagine you did both, probably showing off a little, just to make a point. I would have expected nothing less.

We never really talked about the end. It did not seem relevant. You were too busy planning the next thing. I learned from that. Still am.

So today, standing under that wide sky, I had a thought that felt right enough to keep. Somewhere out there, in all that open space, you are not sitting still. You are moving. Exploring. Maybe organizing something unnecessarily complicated, just for the fun of it.

I smiled at that.

Hope, it turns out, is still doing its job.

It shows up in the quiet moments. In the clouds that drift without asking permission. In the habit of looking forward, even when the path is unclear.

And in the simple certainty that some things do not end. They just change locations.

So tonight, I will keep our tradition.

See you in our dreamland.