On the conveyor belt

Yesterday, I took my first bus ride into Esquimalt in several years.

Esquimalt, the community beyond Vic West across the Johnson Street Bridge, is the municipality where I spent my adolescence and my first years as a young married.

I used to take the #23 bus to trundle down the length of Esquimalt Road, but now it's the #15 Express, which, in the opposite direction, can take you all the way to the University of Victoria. I sure could have used that when I was a student.

The Resident Fan Boy and I rode past divider islands that run down the centre of the road, planted with flowers and trees. Those certainly weren't around when we lived there.

Some of the stretches are depressingly the same; other stretches have been condo-ized and still others shopified, so bits of Esquimalt look like the busier bits of Shelbourne.

However, the sorts of people clambering on and off the bus are much as I remember - elderly and clearly struggling (in every sense), young and gritty (also in every sense).

So many memories - interrupted by the astonishment of unfamiliar buildings, fronted by mature trees, reminding us how very long we've been away.

We were on our way to a so-called Celebration of Life, so-called because the gentleman in question died a month ago, and this post-funeral/memorial-service gathering accommodated his far-flung family.

The bus took us to the very western edge of Esquimalt. Despite my long history of living in the municipality, I'd never been beyond the south end of Admirals Road, where I'd ridden my bike to junior high, and where the taxi took me when I was in labour with elder daughter.

So we rode deep into "Pongo-land", and alighted by the blue waters of Esquimalt Harbour, making our way up the volcanic rock where the Ward Room sits, with its million-dollar view (well, millions of dollars, these days) out over Juan de Fuca Strait.

The man we'd come to remember and honour had been one of the RFB's very first bosses, and he, along with his business partner, had been a kindly older gentleman of the same vintage as my father - except with honesty and integrity -- are those sour grapes? (Vintage? Grapes? Get it? Oh, never mind.)

The widow seemed truly touched we'd come, and we told it was our pleasure, and meant it.

On our way home, the Resident Fan Boy was contemplative.
"It's just that...they're gone ..."
"...and the conveyor belt rolls on," I finished.

Yep. So many reminders that afternoon of the relentless passage of time.

This isn't going to get any easier.