By Rodney Wilson

Three bugle notes caught my attention “C – C – E”.

It was just 9 PM and I was sitting on the barrack steps.  The barracks of Company 332 5/44 US Navy Boot Camp San Diego, California will be my home for four weeks. How proud I felt to be a sailor.  At 17 years and 6 months old a whole new world opened up to and for me. In a short time closure of a passed period of my life had started.

More notes, “C – E – G”. And then 16 additional finished the piece.  Taps had just sounded over the entire base.

Lights out.

Since Civil War days Taps ordered that it was time for all Lights out – Closure of the Day.  24 notes said it all

Day is done, gone the sun,

From the hills, from the lake,

From the sky.

All is well, safely rest,

God is nigh.

I suppose I had listened to Taps a number of times, probably at the Memorial Day observances in Guthrie, Oklahoma where I grew up. I had never really heard it until that night at the Navy Base.  I discovered that closure is important in many arenas.

When the time comes, I’m going to ask my friend Wayne Bates, who plays trumpet, to sound Taps at my memorial service as a closure of my life.