The Beach

Carey sat on the damp sand with her knees folded up to her chest, her body hunched forward against the cold. The biting wind whipped up her shoulder length blonde hair, blowing around her face where it clung wetly to the freshly fallen tears that lay unchecked on her cheeks. Her hands were wrapped around her legs in a weak gesture of protection from the hostile world as she stared unseeingly out into the grey swirling waters of the ocean.

The waves pounded down on the shore, the foam spraying against her face, mixing with the tears and the mist of rain that had begun to fall an hour previously. Still, she sat on the damp sand a lonely figure, completely absorbed in her own misery.

Her mind was empty of any thoughts, although the tears continued to roll down her cheeks. An ocean of unshed tears had yet to fall. Too many times she had kept her emotions in check, protecting her children and her family from the outpouring of grief that tore at her heart. The waves of overwhelming hurt swelled up within her until she felt little choice but to run away and find this lonely patch of sand where there would be no need to explain her tears or justify her grief and guilt.

Carey felt that the pain was too much at times to bare alone, but at the same time it was too much to place on someone else's shoulders. She could not let herself burden others with the depth of grief that she felt.

It was on the beach, alone that she felt comfortable to let her grief out where there was nothing but the rolling ocean waves and the occasional seagull to see her tears. And then when she was finished, with nothing to show for her time but red-rimmed eyes, she could return home to her responsibilities. Out here there could be no well-meaning questions about how she was feeling, no gentle prodding about the importance in “talking” through her problems. It wasn’t fair to burden others; people had enough problems of their own.

The sun started to edge over the horizon, a sign that darkness would soon be falling. The flimsy cardigan that she wore would not provide enough warmth to protect her from the cold winter night. The rain had started to soak through her clothes and she began to shiver. Still, she stayed where she was. The ocean continued its pounding, the winter waters looking as grey and unfriendly as the world appeared to the sad, lonely woman sitting by herself. Her face a picture of misery, her loneliness etched in the lines of her body, hunched over with grief and sadness.

The whole world seemed to have passed her by, sitting by herself. Her faded denim jeans rode up over her bare ankles, her pink toe nail polish somehow misplaced on her feet that were covered with wet sand and beginning to turn blue from the cold. Her cardigan, which she had blindly grabbed from her room in her haste to leave, did little to protect her against the gently falling rain. Already it was beginning to soak through her clothes and occasionally Carey would shiver, the only sign other than the continual flow of tears down her cheeks that there was any life at all. Her eyes, a deep dark brown normally showed a depth of feelings and emotions appeared blank and lifeless as they were fixed without seeing out into the fury of the ocean.

Along the shore a lone seagull walking along the water’s edge captured Carey’s attention. She stared at it through the tears that blurred her vision. She watched it as it picked its way through the seaweed that had washed up to the water’s edge in the previous night's storm, hoping to find some food amongst the debris.

Carey rose with a sigh and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan, finally acknowledging the tears that had fallen in the time that she had been staring out into the ocean. She began to make her way slowly towards her house, delaying her return as long as possible.

The seagull was still moving around along the shore as she walked past. It watched her balefully, wary of any sort of intrusion from the stranger. As Carey got closer to where it was standing she noticed that amongst the washed up seaweed and human paraphernalia of rubbish that littered the beach there was a dead seagull. It was lying partially hidden beneath a plastic bag and an empty chip packet. Its neck turned grotesquely in the wrong direction, its unseeing eyes staring up in silent reproach at his brother who continued without seeming to notice picking his way through the refuse searching for food.

This seagull, not concerned with the dead, but with the business of living moved around the fallen seagull without pausing, as though it did not exist. It could no longer help him to survive and it could not provide a food source. The seagull was not sitting by itself crying, wasting precious days grieving, it did not throw itself over his brother’s grave weeping. He was concerned about living, about surviving.

Maybe there was also a family dependent upon the seagull somewhere out over the ocean, a young family waiting for their dinner just as Carey’s family would be. The chicks sitting safe and warm in the nest that he had built for them, waiting impatiently for the scraps that their father could find them along the edges of the shore.

The seagull would never let his family go hungry as Carey had, he would never neglect those who relied upon him for comfort and warmth while he cried over his brother. So wrapped up in her own world of misery, Carey had forgotten her family that needed and relied on her. The children who, she loved with all of her heart would even now would be asking where their mummy was, wondering why she had, again deserted them.

Carey wrapped her cardigan closely around herself and walked more quickly towards the neat row of houses that faced the beach, her house keys jingling in her pocket as she walked. For the first time she walked with purpose and an expectation of a brighter future. Moving faster, her bare feet sinking into the cold, damp sand she was impatient to reach the warmth of her home and to feel her children’s arms around her.

She found her children, quietly watching television in almost the same spots that she had left them. She reached them and wrapped them up in her arms and for the first time in months, loving the feel of their little bodies, as they melted into hers.

“Mummy is back now," she told them quietly through the tears of relief as she held her precious ones close to her, “I’m back now.”

Just like the lone seagull on the beach it was also time for Carey to get on with the business of living.