Charles Maurice Lived and Dreamed
Born in St. George in New Brunswick in 1903, Charles was a dreamer. What did he think of? What were his dreams? Well, lumber took up most of his days throughout the year. Cutting logs, chopping wood, moving the logs and planks from here to there. But, among his diverse interests, he liked to read some authors a lot, like Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, Charles Dickens, and a few others who wrote about India and the Far East. Charles, many people calling him Charlie since his youth, was constantly thinking about and learning about the whole world. And its peoples. The library was his favorite place to find books and magazines about all these things. He would spend time there perusing and check out the articles to bring back to his home. He had a small den and a small library, but the library was the place of his biggest documented treasures.
Charles was religious and derived a great deal of contentment from his religious life and community.
Christianity was everywhere in his world, where he lived and worshipped and attended dances and ice cream socials, but he was always fascinated by the beliefs of others... The Jews were the source of the Abrahamic faiths, the Muslims were populated in so many countries. What of the Hindus and the animists across the world? The local Mic Mac Indians had their ways, their spirits and stories. He loved to talk to them when he could.
He worked the forests and lumber, did some occasional river work and hydration projects, but his mind was not so much invested in the physical labor he rendered. He helped out with different people's cattle, a few hours or days every week. Depending on their needs.
Charles always wanted to marry; he did when he was 28. His wife died three years later. She could not have kids, anyway: there was no one left behind for him to worry about. Her family moved to the United States, likely the Boston area, before he had met her. Batilda. She came and went. A chapter of love and heartache, but he was okay. He moved on in life into his thirties. He knew life was no longer about her. There were two women that he pined after, as he grew older.
But wait a minute: where is New Brunswick? More people know about Nova Scotia that pokes out into the Atlantic than New Brunswick! Forgotten province. Many more know about little Prince Edward Island, and even Newfoundland, which most of us will never go to, perhaps more will go to Greenland...
We digress. Let's get back to Charles and his loves. The first woman who he fancied was married. She was in a nice family; her husband was the main lawyer for the town, they had nice children, and everyone loved them. He knew it was bad juju to look too closely to a married woman, but sometimes Charles could not help himself. He saw no flaws in her, which he had easily seen in every other woman that he ever knew, including his mother and his aunts and all the women and girls that he observed. They were loud and crass and laughed at the wrong things. They talked about silly things and avoided knowing about deeper and more profound subjects, thing that Charles himself valued. Why would you not want to know about the dozens of tribes and ethnic groups that inhabited the Sahara Desert? Why guff and gossip about the newest pant style coming from New York or Paris? Only one woman he ever knew gave a whit or care about those things which he had valued more: knowledge of the planet and its peoples. And of course she was married.
Charles was happy that she existed, at least. That she paid any attention to him.
His deceased wife sometimes pretended to care about exotic or esoteric things that kept his mind alive, but she didn't. That did not mean that he did not love and care for her, but she never got into his dreams like the lawyer's wife.
Pshaw. God put us here for purposes, only he knows the answers. Right? Surely all of this creation, all the way down to Saint George, New Brunswick makes sense at some level. It must.
The other woman that Charles admired was loud and crass. She was fun. Funny, entertaining, there was no end to her. Even though he could be tired of her ways, he never was tired of her spirit and spunk. She was not perfect by any means, but so colorful and funny! She was the cleverest person he had ever known. Shrewd, and witty, and she could sing and dance. She didn't mind being embarrassed, or poking and teasing at others. Her critiques of his comments and observations were so bold and overbearing that he would laugh out loud at her harangues; he would find himself chuckling about her words in his quiet hours, or even worshipping in the quiet church downtown, or way out in the forests and the mountains. She always brought an unquenchable joy to his thoughts.
She was crazy. But brilliant. She had been married three times. Each former husband was a mystery. Was the first one locked up in the Plains, spoken to by the Mounties and servant keepers of the Metis? Was the second guy feeding the fishes or whales out to sea? Was the third guy off learning the ways of mystical transcendence off in a small village of Honshu, Japan? Quite possibly, all of the above.
Why would they leave? Did she really marry them? Her stories were hard to discern. Was it all just a joke and a fairy tale to her?
Charles could never quite figure it out.
One time when Charles was fifty, he cornered her, and demanded that she confess her status and interest. "No, sir," she replied. "I cannot be pinned down, as God on High wishes me to be free, independent, and open to the greater possibilities."
Wow. That is something.
By the end, and in his life, Charles was not all about the women that he loved. He was more. He was a great sibling, friend, cousin, uncle, and real treat to all who met him, both to strangers and to those who knew him the best.
He died earlier in life, which was an accident, but he was happy and good when it happened. He was crushed by a large trailer of logs. Trying to do his thing, still strong at 62 years old. People laughed and cried at his funeral. He was a sweet, really a good man. He worked hard, only complained when something needed its window dressing, or the opposite.
Charles believed that God was in charge of the course of human destiny. He thought highly of Jesus, who had left His mark, or marks across the centuries, but he always wondered what Jesus would do in the 20th century. Could he the best doctor, or the savvy lawyer, or a judge, or even a farmer or a lumberjack?
Would He choose to rule from a throne, or would he go among the people like Florence Nightengale or the any number of great nurses and healers across the expanse of humanity?
Charlie always wondered, always dreamed, always hoped. His grave said, "Charlies was a dreamer; he welcomed all to his table, he shared with people of all station."
No one can remember who put that there.
He left behind a good feeling on all who knew him. His gravestone, too.
In the 21st century he is all but forgotten; some descendants or further distant family thought of him, and wanted to bring him to the pages of this obscure corner of the internet and to the light of what some might care to think of a person that the pages of history will not cover, but his name came up on a Friday afternoon, and here this Saturday in the later hours of this hot day, think of Charlie who grew, who aged, who left mortality, who did not beget progeny, but left behind a wake of work and exploration.
To the man who made it to Boston twice, Halifax innumerable times, and lived and died in Saint George.
To Mr. Clinch, we almost kind of knew you. But no matter how much we knew him, he was a person of worth that gives us a moment of thought and contemplation.
We thank you for that.
