I only knew John Bil as the owner of the Ship to Shore, the erstwhile restaurant in Darnley where I had the pleasure of eating several times, most notably on the night of Reuben’s Jamboree back in 2009.

John, it turns out, was a great friend to the Pendergast family, and they to him, and Shane Pendergast captures that connection, and John’s essence, poignantly in this short film about him.

John died this week, and so Shane’s film serves as a remembrance of his life for those that knew him and those that didn’t.

Toward the end of the film, Shane asked John if he had any regrets; he replied:

I’m really fortunate: over the years I did whatever I wanted to do.

So I don’t really have a bucket list. Which is great, because it means I didn’t have to start looking back and figuring out things that I didn’t do before that I should do now. It meant that I could just keep living. And keep doing whatever I wanted to do.

And now I’m so happy that I did that the way that I did it over the years, because it means that I can live in the now, without regretting, without wondering.

I look at my life as a semi-random collection of amazing things that have happened.

You know, I’m probably gonna die. It sucks. But it didn’t change me, it reaffirmed the choices I’d made.

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