INTO THE WEST

Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men who strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

TENNYSON, “Ulysses”

On the night of January 23, 2017, he left me. I was holding his hand. He was the novelist Douglas Reeman. We had been lovers for more than thirty years.

Storyteller, sailor. Gentleman. Dearest of men. A man who wrote of his country from his heart, when love of country was and is, perhaps, politically incorrect. He knew her history, her heroes, the blood, toil, tears and sweat of her wars, and illuminated them for decades for hundreds of thousands of readers; and whose books, as long as I live and have the power to safeguard them, will continue to bear witness to those truths.

While I, his girl, bear witness to mine.

Onward, he would say. Toward the next horizon.

Be with me, beloved spirit, while I hold my course.