Sea Cliffs

[Warning: strong language used, death of family members, car accidents, cancer.]

Everything is fragile, temporary.

I can’t measure it. I can’t even begin to explain it. It rips my heart in two.

The clock on the mantle changes, harsh red light reading 4:03. I sigh, the sound of a final exhale.

I can’t sleep anymore, I know that. I have a million words to tell you how hard it is to close my eyes, to drift away into blissful reprieve. All I can do is close my eyes and pretend to rest, stumbling between awake and unconscious.

When I fruitlessly grasp for some semblance of rest, it is on the living room couch, not in our bedroom. I haven’t opened the door since.

I want to. I should. But I can’t.

Knives hide in that room. In her jewelry box of bequeathed beauty. The way her side of the bed was playfully messy, her pillow stained with the comforting scent of her hair. The way her side of the sink was a collage of hair products and makeup.

Landmines are scattered within that corner of the house.

If I ever work up the nerve to open that door, the wave of memories will carry me away with the tide, shattering me.

4:05. I sit up on the couch and toss aside the warm quilt. I walk to the kitchen and fill a glass with ice water. The cold liquid filters through the crevices of my heart. Freezing me from the inside.

I duly admire the darkness outside the kitchen window, shadows cast by the single streetlamp powering a dying bulb. I sigh. I am drowning in a silence this world does not understand.

My phone buzzes. I fish it out of my pocket, numbingly repeating an automatic reflex. Facial recognition. Check notifications.

Nothing important. Just an upgrade alert. No early-morning text.

With a click of my finger, the harsh glare of the pixelated screen is silenced, gone. Leaving behind spots burned in my vision as I return to utter darkness. I set the phone face-up on the counter, bracing my palms on either side of the sink. My head sags in defeat.

Every time I open my phone, I am looking for something. I don’t quite know what, because every text from my parents or, even worse, her parents, pisses me off. At first, my parents and in-laws would text me a long paragraph of sympathy. With sentences like ‘I feel your loss’ and all that bullshit. I got similar “comforting” words from my brother and her siblings, but they were just filled with empty words.

For a week or so, I was bombarded with texts and calls, each one asking how I was, and how I was “coping”.

I hate that word. There is no way to cope with my loss, no way to move on after a few days and rejoin the rest of the universe. No way to hold onto that last goodbye. That last kiss. That last time watching her leave the house, a beautiful smile on her face.

The memories hit me like a hurricane, bombarding me. Somehow, I pull myself out of the past and claw my way back to the present. A drop lands in the kitchen sink. I wipe away any newly forming tears before they can follow.

Shit.

For sixteen years, we were happy. We were together.

And now, only one of us stands here, looking out the window.

A few more tears fall, but I stamp out the urge to conjure any more. I cried enough the first week without her.

My phone is lit with an unkind glow beckoning to me. The time reads 4:39. Time flies by when you're drowning in your thoughts.

I open the text, letting the camera recognize my drying tears.

The message is from Amy’s parents. An invitation to another baby shower. I guess they’re done mourning the loss of their daughter, I think venomously. Just turn around and welcome a new life into your family like the one you just lost was replaceable, why don’t you?

It makes me sick. How can I be alone in this emptiness, this gaping hole inside my heart? It makes me sick. How can I be alone in this emptiness, this gaping hole inside my heart? I know they loved her; she was their loving daughter, their supportive older sister. How could they just erase her like this? Take away her memory?

Why do I feel isolated in my grief? Trapped in a room with no escape? They have all moved on, but I’m left behind trying to pick up the remains of my life. They found closure long ago, leaving me to wake up every morning pretending it was a bad dream.

The emotional pain eroding my mind drives me crazy. Amy was the only one who understood, who empathized, who knew how to heal me. After our dog died a few years ago, I floundered, but she kept me steady. She was the rock I turned to, and now I don’t have her anymore.

With a mangled cry of desperation and anger, I throw my phone in the sink, barely registering the deafening sound. It doesn't matter. None of it matters without Amy. She was everything to me, and now she’s gone.

I need to get out, to leave the claustrophobic confines of this house. She is the heartbeat of this place, and it is suffocating me.

I numbly grab my keys from their hook next to the garage door. With my jacket in hand, I slam the door behind me. The next thing I know, I am driving down the street.

I don’t remember; I just float like a fog in this life. Living without feeling isn’t quite living at all. Living without love isn’t quite living either.

Maybe I don’t care, or maybe my subconscious is controlling my destination, but somehow I end up at the sea cliffs. The sea-weathered sign designates this area as a national monument. What makes this place a monument eludes me to this day, but this sand-encrusted place has grown on me since Amy first took me here.

I park the car, the glow of 5:12 on the dash extinguished with the flick of my wrist.

I open my door, letting the chill, salty air blowing off the ocean beckon to me. I close the car door, then regret the harsh sound marring the tranquil quiet of the sea.

A soft glow echoes on the horizon, heralding a new day with the rising of the sun. I fill my lungs with the quickly dissipating fog, sitting on the broken asphalt path. Cracks web at random intervals, while scraggly green grass and new clover flowers sprout with a vigor only spring can coax out of the sandy earth. I pluck one, spinning it between my thumb and index finger.

I sigh and close my eyes, tilting my head back in defeat. Everything is broken, from the crest of the waves to the cold pavement I am sitting on. Everything is shattered, reflecting my heart. Nothing remains whole this close to the sea.

I find it beautiful.

The weather reminds me of our fourth date, when we drove hours from our college campus just for this view. Just to show me the ocean's dangerous yet ethereal beauty.

I imagine her as a young girl, playing with her siblings in the long grass that rises and falls with the breeze. Running among the scraggly and twisted pines. She is nothing more than a ghost now, haunting her childhood stomping grounds.

When I first came here, the afternoon sun graced us with warmth, but an intermittent gust of wind from the ocean would make the hairs on my arms rise. The weather reflected the sea below, crashing in foaming waves against the cliffs. I was overwhelmed by the nature surrounding me, how it endured the harsh storms blown towards the coast and was still able to produce life. There was a nourishing side to the unforgiving demeanor of the sea cliffs.

I was also overwhelmed by her. The way she laughed and raced me down the narrow paths through the grass. The wind playing with her hair. Her blue eyes reflected the sky, brimming with unrestrained mirth.

We shared countless hours here, picnics while we were dating, and summer sunsets walking together among the grass, trees, and sky. I remember every good time, every smile and laugh that set my heart alight.

I proposed to her here, at her favorite place, a secret platform that overlooked the sea. The way she gasped in surprise still makes me smile. Without hesitation, she took the ring and slid it on her left finger, surprised giggles bubbling up like a stream. The tears streaming down her face were beautiful, and I held her close, inhaling the familiar scent of her hair.

The memory makes me smile, but the movement hurts my face. I pretend that the breeze is a lingering remnant of her touch. Her gentle kindness remains in this place, eternally tied to the salty air.

Faded headlights interrupt my thoughts as another car pulls up a few spaces away from mine. I look over, and only then do I realize my cheeks are slightly damp with tears I don’t recall shedding.

I check my watch, and it reads 6:10. Only two months ago, Amy and I were sitting next to each other on the couch, watching the world wake up with its consistent glow. Just me, enjoying the beauty of the world next to its most beautiful creation.

I don’t have any coffee, but I have the morning, and that is enough.

A loud sound disturbs my thoughts, and I turn to the sound. An old man walking with a cane, the driver of the new car, had just closed his door. He walked slowly around the front of the car to the passenger side, carefully placing each foot and using his cane to support most of his weight. He opens the door but struggles to grab a small container in the seat while also holding his cane.

Suddenly compelled into action, I hurry over to the old man without knowing why. “Let me help you,” I say, getting him situated, cane in hand and the carved box tucked under his arm.

Rather than express his gratitude, he does quite the opposite. “Mind your own business, boy,” he huffs and hobbles away.

I’m shocked by his dismissal, but I decide to follow him as he slowly makes his way down the perilous trail through the grass barely a foot and a half wide. The old man is unknowingly guiding me to the past, taking the same route Amy once ran down with a bubbly glee as I trailed behind and tried not to stumble.

She had thrown her head back and laughed, closing her eyes as she ran. The contagious sound had me laughing as well, the breeze scattering the joyous sound to undiscovered places. She had led me to a platform of weathered wood, where you can look down upon the surf seething seventy feet below. We laughed together and reveled in the dying sun of late afternoon.

We ran again on the way back, but this time I forgot to watch my footing. The next thing I knew, I was sprawled in the grass but laughing too hard to care. Amy turned back and helped me up, but our sides were in stitches from the jubilation overflowing from our mouths. It took forever to get me back to my feet, and with our shoulders still shaking uncontrollably, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed me.

A memory of the sensation and emotion of that kiss lingers just out of reach, but just the hint of it is enough to make me smile. I wish Amy were close enough to hold in my arms, but she is entirely out of reach.

The old man ahead of me stumbles slightly and, a few steps later, falls to his knees. Rushing forward, I grab his elbow and help him back to his feet. Using me as a crutch, he is able to regain his balance, desperately clutching the box to his chest.

“Thank you.” He says begrudgingly, but with a hint of gratitude carefully disguised underneath. I smile.

We walk together, me following slightly behind him. “What brings you here this early in the morning?”

He is silent, just the sound of his puffing breath disturbing the tranquil morning. The sun peeks out from the horizon, blinking sleepily from its slumber. At long last, he speaks, “I came to say goodbye.” His voice is quiet, weighted down with a familiar sorrow.

“Me too.”

Moments pass, seconds gone. But the silence is comfortable, not suffocating.

“Goodbye to what?” He asks gruffly yet gently. The path has widened enough to walk side by side.

“My wife,” I sigh, opening to this peculiarly closed-off man I met only moments ago. “She passed away recently.”

“Mine too. She loved this place.”

“Same.” We are individually talking about the woman we lost. I am speaking about Amy, and he is telling me about his beloved, but another person would assume we are reminiscing about the same woman. The same lost love.

“I never knew this place existed until she showed me.” I disturb the blanket of stillness. We walk side by side up the cracked wooden steps to the platform. The view is beautiful, waves stained pink and orange by the sun.

“Yeah, she took me here after our wedding. Showed me her hometown.” He rests his cane against the wooden rail and leans his forearms against it.

“I proposed to her here. Right on this overlook.” My soft voice is tender as I relive the moment. I mimic the man’s stance, placing my trust in the rail as I lean on it.

“We were married sixty-three years before cancer stole her.”

“Fourteen for us.”

A brief pause. A couple of breaths. “How?”

“Car accident. Two months ago.” I suppress the gruesome images of the wreckage, instead focusing on her smile before she left for work. I will forever cherish that last sparkle in her blue eyes.

“Last month. We cremated her last week. I’m here to spread her ashes.”

“So she’ll be here forever,” I nod. Our eyes meet and we smile. His crow’s feet crinkling tell me he used to laugh often. Probably not as frequently without his wife.

“Finally, somebody understands!” His voice becomes melancholy. “My children wanted her buried properly, but I refused to stray a word from her will. She wanted to be ash, and specifically wanted her spirit to roam here forever. A promise is a promise. I gave her my life sixty-three years ago; I owed her the world.”

“I did too.” I sigh, letting go of my sorrow, letting the pain dissipate into the sunrise. We both stand here, next to each other, leaning against the railing. We are still burdened by grief, but it is lightened. We found another person who relates.

Something resembling comfort and contentment wraps itself around me. Maybe finding closure is exposing your wounds with another person, welcoming healing with a tender vulnerability. I guess that’s what my in-laws found. Being so close together, relying on each other was natural.

The old man opens the box and takes a handful of the gray dust inside, throwing it out towards the sea. The breeze carries her spirit away to places unknown. I should have cremated Amy and scattered her spirit throughout this sacred place. I picture Amy haunting this place with her fierce joy and gentle ways, running down trails and through the trees. Until I die, I can picture her waiting here for me. I can see her between every blink, a flickering presence slipping through my fingertips.

More ash is spread, and with every handful, both the box and our spirits lighten. “She was a daughter of the sea, born slightly inland of here but found her heart right where we stand.”

“Amy grew up here. His parents moved down to Arizona right before we married. We could have lived anywhere in the world, but she wanted to live here. It took me a bit, but I fell in love with it too.” We grin at the memories, both of us drawn to this place because of the women we met in life.

“I used to hate it here,” he laughs. “Hated the salt in the air and the gloomy sea weather.”

I laugh with him. “Me too! Oh, but I loved her too much to want to leave.”

“Same!” The old man laughs, tears welling in his eyes.

We turn back to watch the sunrise, the sun steadily climbing as we exchange tender stories. Eventually, we walk back, laughing as we do so.

Two people who learned how to live with the loss. Learning how to smile despite it all.

Amy is gone, but she lives and breathes right next to me, a faint glow in the corners of my eyes. I feel a weight leave my shoulders.

After the old man drives off, I climb into my car and start the engine. 7:13 comes to life on the dash. For a second, I freeze, thrown back to that morning two months ago. 7:13 was when I arrived on scene, a blur of shock and twisted metal as I was asked to identify the body.

Finding some hidden reserve of internal strength, I suppress the onslaught of sorrow and think about this beautiful morning. Meeting a new person, sharing my memories of Amy. Good things happened today. I found a way to smile through the pain. That was all I needed all along. Finding laughter in the tears.

I chuckle to myself as I drive away, back to the house of memories.

Back to Amy.