AT SEA
Chuck Bowie is in his mid 80s. He lives alone except for a diabetic cat named Zoomie who requires two insulin shots a day. His house sits deep in the woods on the Eastern Shore of Maryland along a road lined with towering pines that is so narrow, two cars can barely pass each other. He and his wife, Ruthe, moved here 25 years ago to be closer to their granddaughter.
Ruthe passed in 2014, but it is not her absence that fills the silence between the ticks of the clock that hangs above the rocker. It is not the weight of her loss that presses down on the plaid pillows.
On the wall below the stairs hangs a small, square picture, an old snapshot of a little boy standing on a dock, fishing rod in hand. Chuck looks at it for a moment, then waves his arm in a follow me gesture. Tall and smiling, with scrubbed pinkish skin and silver hair parted neatly to the side, he ambles to the kitchen.
A row of cabinets runs the length of the room, with two short ones creating an open space above the sink. Chuck flips a switch, and under-cabinet lights illuminate the backsplash, revealing a mural that re-creates the photo of the boy, with the child standing in the space below the short cabinets, his jaw set, his eyes focused on the yellow-green water. The image captures so much that could not be known at the time. The dyslexia that would lead the boy to prefer things that he could do over those that he could study, the single-mindedness, the dedication, the near total alignment of a being and its purpose.
It is not quite dusk, and in the soft light the image almost glows. “We had a local artist re-create it from the photo,” Chuck says. “We thought it would be a good way to remember Christopher.”
Twenty-five years after Christopher Bowie first held that fishing pole and stood on that dock, his passion for the sea swallowed him whole. And 25 years after his loss, Chris’s friends and family, including the dad he left behind and the daughter he never met, are still trying to break free.
“The way it happened was shocking,” says his sister, Robyn, “but the reason it has had such an impact is because of who he was. When people say, ‘Life can change in a heartbeat,’ I always think, You have no f---in’ clue.”
Chuck Bowie pulls out a slip of paper. “My cheat sheet,” he says. The page includes reminders of his favorite Chris stories, the ones he has told again and again through the years.
