The Waves At The Shore

By John McDonnell

When you lose someone you love, the wound heals but the scars never go away.

This past weekend I took my daughter to a soccer tournament at the Jersey Shore. The rest of the team stayed at a hotel, but we stayed at my mother’s summer home. It’s been in our family for over 50 years, and some of my earliest memories are of summer vacations spent at that house. It’s the one thing in my life that I still have from my childhood, because it’s basically the same house that I remember going to as a five year old.

So, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at what happened.

All weekend I kept noticing white haired people everywhere. Older men and women, walking to the beach, riding bikes, strolling along the main street at night, waiting in line for ice cream cones, eating lunch at the local sidewalk cafes. I took my daughter to Mass on Sunday morning, and we were surrounded by senior citizens. There was a choir, and they were the picture of serenity in their sky blue robes and their white hair.

There was a simple reason for all these seniors. It was October, and the families with young kids were gone from the beach community. The kids were back in school, the adults back at their jobs and houses and lives at home. The community was given back to the older folks, the ones who’ve retired there or who own summer houses that they use after Labor Day, when the young people go back to their busy lives in the city. Some of them may even have come down for vacation in October, preferring the quiet of fall to the noise and heat and cotton candy atmosphere of summer.

Looking at those older people, I suddenly had tears in my eyes. Why did this affect me so?

Because my Dad wasn’t there, and he should have been.

My father died 17 years ago, at the age of 70, cut down by mesothelioma, a lung cancer caused by the asbestos he was exposed to as a young man in the construction industry.  He died only 18 months after retiring from his job, and he never got much chance to spend time at the seashore house he loved.

He had put off his retirement till he was 69, working a few extra years to put more money away, but he fully expected to have a long retirement.

It never happened. He got his diagnosis in May, and died in September. He had one last summer to enjoy the seashore, but after a couple of weekends in June he was too weak to go back. The last time he was there he sat in his favorite chair and just looked around at the seagulls wheeling overhead, the cedar trees rustling in the breeze, and the families walking to and from the beach.

It was a tragedy, but I had put it out of my mind. I hadn’t felt the sadness in so long I thought it was gone forever. It came back, though, in a heartbeat. In the blink of an eye I was right back in the middle of it, my chest aching with the weight of tears, my eyes burning, my throat closing up.

When you’re a child you don’t think about endings. I was a child for a long time, but now I realize nothing ever really ends. You think it does, but it’s never really finished. All it takes is the right circumstances and you’re right back where you were before. Time is circular that way.

I don’t have an answer, or a neat ending, for this essay. I wish I did, but all I can say is that growing up is not easy, and that nothing is ever finished. The waves beat against the shore the same way they have for thousands of years, and the way they will for thousands more. You can lose yourself in their rhythm, or you can stop and focus on the passing of time. You can rage about the injustice in the world, or you can put it out of your mind and concentrate on the minutiae of daily living.

But it’s never really gone.