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It’s the story of two Olivers, the two very different journeys they took, and the impact they had on me.
One simply brightened my day. Brightened my week. It shone through the gloom of cluster bombs, super-charged heatwaves, robberies and ram raids, and mums charged with killing their kids. You know, the flotsam that is the day’s news.
Oliver’s was a feel good story. Made a lot of people feel good.
The other Oliver story is a very personal one.
There are parallels and then there aren’t. This Oliver story change my life rather than my day.
So I will start there. Thirty-three years ago I stood in a church, God’s house, holding a tiny white casket. My first son, a little boy called Oliver.
‘He’ had blessed us with this gift, then just six weeks later, inexplicably took him from us.
Beautiful
He was beautiful. Fine jet black hair, angular features and electric blue eyes.
But it was a little face that would never smile, never laugh, never cry, never be sad or angry. Just beautiful. We had lost him and it crushed me.
I stood there clutching Oliver, soaking up Beethoven’s sad and wistful ‘Fur Elise’ and looking to the 150 friends and family gathered in the pews for answers. There were none of course.
But I did wish for him a wild, boisterous adventure on his way to where beautiful, innocent souls go to play out their forever days.
I pleaded with the Angels to give this child the ride of his short, sad life. Spare nothing on the road to Heaven, I asked the Angels… if there is one. You endure a deep sense of helplessness in these circumstances. You cling to anything and everything. And so, if there was the remotest chance of there being a place for Angels,
saints and souls, then I demanded Oliver be
given admittance.
A truck driver
The other Oliver wasn’t in need of divine help, but help nonetheless. And an Angel stepped up – in this case his Mum.
She created a slice of heaven for him.
This Oliver is truck nuts. Some kids love Kylian Mbappe, others Taylor Swift – but give this Oliver a DAF, Scania, Kenworth, or Peterbilt any day.
He’d probably tell you the average class 8 semi-truck engine is 14.8 litre, six cylinders with 560hp and 1850lbs of torque. He’d probably also tell you semi-truck engines regularly pass 1,000,000 miles.
Important stuff, meaningful stuff.
His Mum says all he wants to do is be a truck driver.
Now this Oliver is an eight-year-old whom they say is ‘given to solitude’, is a wee bit lonely and was set to have another quiet birthday.
Until his Mum created the warm, loving presence of an Angel.
She posted an offer of $50 for a truckie willing to take Oliver for a birthday romp. A local trucking firm put the word out and 34 truckers responded. Then on the day 64 big rigs rolled up to show goodwill to someone they didn’t know.
“Bout a mile outta Shaky Town, I says Pig Pen, this here’s the Rubber Duck, and I’m about to put the hammer down.”
I hope C.W.McCall was
blaring away.
“Yeah, we got a little ol’ convoy, Ain’t she a beautiful sight.”
Oliver’s quiet birthday suddenly became a global event, the world was talking about him. Or were they talking about community, the fact good people had done a good thing for OIiver?
Back them
The owner of the trucking firm said he would “like every kid to know there is people out there that will back them and stand beside them.”
We all need that sometimes.
Either way, Oliver’s story is powerful enough for me to be banging on about it two weeks after the event. So when the media’s angsting about the All Blacks Rugby World Cup chances – you know, the big issues – or when business scribes are picking over the shocker food inflation figures, I continue to take comfort from Oliver.
I will ride with him thank you.
Hey Oliver, we’ve never met, probably never will, but you can add one more mate to your list of reserves if you like. Then, I suppose, you now have 64 new buddies, and each with a big rig, so you don’t need me.
And no, I don’t begrudge you your convoy. I just wish the other Oliver had the same opportunity.
And I can only hope there were Kenworths plying the highway to heaven when he travelled down it.
So there – the story of two Olivers and their respective journeys. And an after-thought – the wonderful things about grief is that it keeps giving. You don’t get over loss and you don’t want to. Thirty-three years after my Oliver was spirited out of my arms, he can still make me weep. I cherish that.
And, of course, I will always wonder about the smart, beautiful, giving man he would have become.
