Message in the Bottle

For Penny,

(Written with David Gilmour’s “Near the End” playing in the background)

Life is hard.

It can be a wonderful adventure, or a harrowing tale, but all of it, both the good and the bad, teaches us the lessons that we need to learn in order to get to that next level.

Observing the world means that we each, must create a mirror image of that world inside of ourselves. It reflects what we have been exposed to, the things that we witness, the experiences we have had, the people we have known and the things that they tell us about ourselves. It is the place inside of us where our virtual parents live, and where they continue to exist long after they have passed from this plane of existence. We build this world unconsciously; we add programming or content to it every day. It is the place where everything that we “know”, resides.

Within that world, is a dark place where we store our pain. A treacherous place, because like the scene of a grisly car accident, it is a place where we cannot bear to visit, yet we spend a great deal of time there. We return to it often trying desperately to gain some measure of understanding from an experience that went horribly wrong, or was otherwise damaging to us. It is the graveyard where the ghosts of lost love reside. Not just the lost love of a partner or companion, but the lost love of a parent or a guardian as well. In the center of this cemetery is a grave where some of us may be shocked to discover a tombstone with our own name on it. The tombstone marks the loss of love that we have for ourselves.

Within this grave are all of the reasons why we feel like we are unlovable. The secrets, the compulsions, the evil deeds, the passionate wanton cruelty to another, the ugly compulsion to protect ourselves by seizing power over others….the things that bring us shame and fear. For many of us, the amount of time we spend staring down into this deep dark whole, is as secret as this hidden cemetery is in the first place.

But it’s there, and we all go to stand next to our own graves of lost love more than any of us likely admit. Most of us find coping strategies to deal with the pain of one sort or another, but most of those “strategies” create even more problems and actually add to the gravesite more reasons to come back to the edge and stare, ponder, wonder and despair, at why we do these things to others, and why we do these things to ourselves?


As I look back into the crystal ball of my own world, I recall the faces of those I have looked up to who have folded while struggling to come to an accord with the demons that live in that grave. Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain, and my grandfather Leslie Caldwell just to name a few. Each of them stood too close to that grave, and eventually, they were pulled into it by the demons they had buried there.

The riddle of the message in the bottle is as old as humanity itself. Like the pirates of old have often sung about, those who crawl far enough into the bottle to discover the message, usually take that message to the grave with them. The Dead tell no tales. Layne did his best to document his decline, hoping that those with ears to hear, and understand, would learn from his mistake. I interpret the name of his band Alice in Chains to be fully representative of the entire experience.

The moral, if there is one, is simply this: there is no escape from the pain of life. There is only our ability and our desire to face the unpleasant aspects of it with hope, fortitude, stamina, Love and forgiveness. The Message in the Bottle was written by the Grim Reaper, and you really don’t want or need to know what it says.

I love you Aunt Penny,

Goodbye.