#44: Saying Goodbye to the Beaches of Her Memory

I’ve always associated myself with the crashing waves and salty air of the ocean. To find some peace and old parts of myself I took a trip to the beach. As an added bonus, I forgot to pack her phone number and had almost no internet access. Whatever emails she wanted to send, whatever messages she needed to hear- they would be replaced by space as I revisited the place that had become the anchor for so many of our happiest memories. Leaving her behind had to involve, at some point, a trip to the beach.

The weekend was calm and familiar: card games, long walks, ice cream, and playing guitar on the back porch have long been the staples of my beach vacations. My aunt, who was also down at the beach, noted that it had been awhile since I’d been down here without L and reminded me of the last time we’d all stayed at the beach house together. I had told her, “L and I love the beach so much” yet we never came out of her room or actually visited it that weekend. At that second I looked over at the seat that would have been saved for her, realizing that she wouldn’t be socializing with us but hiding in her room… and I didn’t miss her.

There is still a hole were she used to fit in my life and I feel it everywhere I walk, like an indentation left on a bed long after someone has woken up and left the building. But this weekend as I spent time with my family, my friends, and my self, I looked at that hole and tried to imagine if the time would be enriched if she was there. “Yes,” I’d say, “if she was happy.” I realized how much of the pleasure I took in her company was conditional. I loved those happy moments and somehow if we were still going to be building those times I think that I would’ve wanted to be with her. After catching her in her lies, after catching her with him, I just want to move on. The space left behind her has started to fill in finally, slowly, after almost a year of being emptied, filled, and emptied again.

Like stretching a unused muscles, it isn’t a completely comfortable process- lunch at our favorite restaurant didn’t bring tears or sadness, only sandwiches, but sleeping in the bed I used to share with her did. Ordering ice cream alone was hard but still pleasant- so much so I decided that it had to happen a second time. So much of the beach town landscape has changed- new bookstores open, old restaurants gone or moved- that it helps me to focus on this as a transition, the standard passing of time rather than the end of the world. Like the tides of the ocean, people come in to your life then slowly roll out, leaving the sand of your soul altered.

While shopping I accidentally pulled out the old photograph of her that I kept in my wallet- one she had printed out on cheap paper and given to me almost five years ago. She’s smiling, wearing a black dress, and a holding a cat so black that he fades into the dress till his eyes look like buttons on the dress. I stuffed it back inside, avoiding it. Is there something telling in the fact that my latest wallet had no place to put a picture so that it was easily seen- so much so that I had forgotten I’d even had it?

One friend has long pressured me to do something symbolic to address the end of my relationship with L, something firm that would show it. He reminded me of how when he decided to go back and finish college he shaved his head. Everyone noticed something was different and it gave impetus to the change. Tonight was my night for that.

I avoided the beach itself all weekend until last night, focusing on enjoying my favorite relaxing spots around the town. As the sun began to fall I drove out to the ocean, my last chance to see it before leaving in the morning. The air was salty and the tide was rolling out, and a few campfires were lit by lifeguards celebrating the end of the day. I pulled the picture of her out of my wallet and stared it as I approached the beach she had loved so much.

I remembered the first time I brought her here, a winter day too cold to swim- she was in a hooded sweatshirt and sandy blue-jeans. She leapt out of the car excited, jumping up and down like a hyperactive toddler, smiling. We had often talked about going swimming in the ocean and making love in the evening and, though we had almost tried once or twice, our courage had always failed us. Instead we’d eat sandwiches or donuts, depending on the time of day, and play. Playing- innocently, without the pain, was something I don’t think we could ever have anymore. The picture, having outlasted two wallets, had now lived beyond the relationship itself.

I bent down as the tide rolled in and pushed it to the bottom of the shallows, I couldn’t see it as the water pulled it out to become part of the ocean. I didn’t cry, I didn’t have time to let that out, but I savored the moment and felt it- the wind, the water, the sadness, the regret, the love for her. It didn’t magically change me the way baptisms are supposed to- there is now a hole in my wallet matching the hole in my life where her picture had stayed hidden. But, like my friend shaving his head, it helped somehow- I had done something. Letting her picture drift out to sea- it honored the ocean that I loved so much and it honored the time we spent together, I let her go out of my life like an old dead king- loved, adorned in treasure, dead, and burning- drifting on the oceans and dancing with ghosts.