Kapuna Ohana Bill Alley

Jon Amundson – Calgary

Ivan told me about Bill’s death at the Duel in the Desert…but I
didn’t put it together until i saw the posting. You see i didn’t know
Bill but had the privilege of racing after him and the honor of
running away from him at the Freshwater Big and Small Boat races
in ’02…saw him a few other times as well and we’d exchange eye
contact and wave, even say a few words. But we had something that was
special, something he and I and a few others share and that is what
we all lost, and what we can’t get back…you see as you age you
watch the numbers fall off around you…illness, changes in life and
plans, retirement,people move away and then some are taken from us,
like Bill. Kapuna are funny…we are competitive and give’em when we
can but we also know that there is a bond of life that touches us in
special ways, lives that stretch behind us and the shorter time we
know intuitively we have left. That bond of life- a connection of
life experiences and the gratitude for the day, the moment, the race,
the eye contact, the smile, every grey hair, the realization we are
doing something other aren’t, can’t or didn’t- maybe sets the Kapuna
apart…it also creates a circle, and ohana, for us whether we know
each other well, or in a conventional sense. The loss of a kapuna is
a loss that can never be replaced. The hole in the ohana can never be
filled…we look around and see our world smaller and though the
sorrows of those that loved him personally are the greater share, our
sorrows are no less in the way we can only feel them. I am so sorry
to see him gone.

JON

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