Cetacea Tears

In the mid-90s, soon after we moved back to Ohio, Dad spotted a peculiar billboard by the highway as he was driving one day.

Unlike all of the other billboards it wasn't an advertisement for a particular place of business. It wasn't trying to raise awareness and donations for any diseases or social ills like domestic violence or drunk driving. It wasn't even a call for volunteers to donate blood or become foster parents or raise money for a homeless shelter.

It was a crying whale. A short message was written next it asking someone (the daughter or son of the writer, we guessed?) for forgiveness.

Our family didn't know any of the individuals involved in whatever had lead up to the rental of that billboard. None of us ever learned the outcome of that cry for reconciliation and peace although Dad did use this as a sermon illustration. I remember him referring to it as an allegory for God's attitude toward unbelievers.

The rest of his sermon has long since been blotted out of my memory. I still wonder, though, what the significance of the whale was in that billboard and whether the man or woman who posted it was ever able to be reconciled with his or her loved one(s).