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From The Publisher

PublisherFrom The Publisher
As I wrote in this column on Tuesday, I’m on a semi-sabbatical, but I had to write these few words on Thursday morning in memory of my cousin and friend,Gilbert “Paady” Lindo, who passed away in Miami, Florida on Wednesday morning.
 
I knew this man from I was a child, and I never yet found fault in him. He was big and strong and friendly. You always felt comfortable and relaxed around him. All his life, Paady was your classic working man – one of Belize’s original welders, from the days of Stretch Lightburn and Basil Bernard.
 
I will remember Paady most vividly in his relationship with my uncle, Buck Belisle, who passed away last September. As I was 10 or 12 years younger than Paady, he was 10 or 12 years younger than Belisle. I never heard Paady refer to my uncle by any other name except “Matty,” and in turn I grew up calling Paady by that name – Matty. I never knew from whence the name derived.
 
I will mostly remember Paady sitting on the gunwale of one of Belisle’s sailboats on one of these same glorious April mornings we are enjoying these days – with the sun rising orange and yellow and gold and its rays glinting off the silvery wavetops. The southeast would be busting in from out there, and the boat would be under full cloth, gliding and bucking and challenging the wind and the waves. Belisle was the captain, cocksure and arrogant, and when the big fish hit one or sometimes both of the twin tow lines, it was his greatness as a seaman and fisherman that made sometimes wild confusion always seem under control.
 
This was Spanish Caye in the years before the hurricane of 1961. In those waters, nine miles southeast of Belize City and due west of English Caye and Goff’s Caye, the fish were huge and varied and spectacular. As seaman and fisherman, Buck Belisle was king at Spanish Caye, and his first cousin, Paady Lindo,was Little John to his Robin Hood.
 
Ay, my readers, those were good days in my childhood life, great days. I was truly blessed, and am humbly grateful.
 
12 years after the hurricane, as fate would have it, Paady Lindo’s older brother, Dean, and I began a vicious political battle which became personal and lasted for 7 years – until 1979. I’m telling you this was serious hassle, but there was never a single day this quarrel ever affected the cool vibes between me and Paady. Not a single day. I don’t know how he did it. The relationship between us was the same from the time I was a child until the last time I saw him, about a year ago.
 
On Wednesday night I got Dean Lindo’s number from nephew Bill and called Dean Russell to offer my condolences.
 
I said to him,” You know Paady was my personal boy.”
 
His answer was prompt, “I know.”
 
I didn’t know any of Paady Lindo’s faults, and I didn’t care to know them. With me and him, it was all good.
 
I write in Matty’s memory, but I write for myself, to savour those moments of his life where I was involved. I never told him while he was alive what a good man he was, but he would have known that I cherished him.
 
You can twist and turn all you want, but life is a journey towards the unknown. During this journey, most of us worship divinities we hope will help us across the Great Divide. At times like these, we remember our divinities, whoever they are.
 
All of you who read these words have some family or friend whom you really cherish. Most of those people are not headline people. They just have the gift of making our lives that much more pleasant, that much nicer. For me, I’m grateful to have known the Matty. In those too brief times we spent together through the years, he made my life more enjoyable every single time. For me, he was a blessing. For real.       

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