The Buddha's Crown

by jackie
(nelson NZ)

I met Bob five years ago after 20 years on my own. We had 3 wonderful years together before he became ill with multiple myeloma and died only 2 months after diagnosis.

I want to tell a story about one of the funny things he got up to but which I wasn't to find out about until much later.

In pride of place, up high in the corner of the lounge I have a large brass statue of a laughing Buddha whom I used to refer back to for comfort and wisdom when all else failed. I also fancied a tin crown which turned up in some old workshop long ago and so the two were put together. I rather liked the duplicity of suggestion which the union suggested. Not so for Bob.

From the beginning he outspokenly maligned the mismatch and some months later, not surprisingly perhaps, I noticed that the crown had disappeared.

None of my probings into the whereabouts of the missing piece brought resolution but I did have some ideas of my own who the culprit really was.
As time wore on I forgot all about the Bhudda's head piece.

We spent a lot of time developing our new garden together and my man showed obvious delight in my love of gardening, and the turkey family I had bought home in a bag one day. This addition was to satisfy a fond childhood memory I had had about a turkey farm we had visited as a family. Turkeys are not nearly so common in New Zealand as in Canada or the US.

Three years and six months later, in early spring I awoke from sleep with the recollection of a dream I had just had about the demise of the crown and I lay for a while pondering the nature of its loss and the loss of my beloved.

Anyway it was a new day and the garden was calling so bedecked in gummies and not so fashionable attire,with Bob Dylan at the helm and with the turkeys joining him in chorus, I set out to tackle my rather neglected compost heap.


Two hours later and two feet down guess what ?
Out stuck the gnarly old pointed crown looking not much the worse for wear apart from a rusty crack or two.

Overcome with the delight and nostalgia of the moment, I was sure I could hear Bob laughing at the unveiling of his not so secret hiding place.

(At this moment I am forced to take care of a large noisy bumble bee caught in the curtain directly in front of my desk and computer)!!!

Don't you delight in those odd but magical moments of synchronicity where worlds collides and we are challenged to revisit the script we have previously written?

thanks heaps my love