My Day At The Beach

The way down the rocky coastal path was so familiar to me as though I had only walked down here just yesterday. In reality it had been 27 years since I had been here and yet everything seemed no different.

The path wound the same way down to the sand, the turns and corners were no different. Yet it seemed more worn than all those years ago when I was here. All the tourists and holiday makers had used this trail to get to the shore and the sea. 

I had come when it was not the holidays hoping for peace and solitude away from the busy life that I had led all these years. I lived in the city away from this area. This was my childhood village and the beach was my playground. 

I remember my brother playing with me and our friends. We would wake on our weekends early, pack our lunches, swimsuits and make our way to our favorite place. We flew kites through the dunes, swam in the sea and ate our sandwiches. It was the best time I had during my childhood.

My childhood however had ended just after my fifteenth birthday. I tried not to remember the pain but I needed to. My therapist had said it would help me move on and be happy. Was it fair to be happy even this long after what happened? I didn’t know but it was worth a try. I just wanted to have a normal life. I had not been the easiest person to be around and my husband told me it was over. He was fed up of my mood swings never knowing which person I would be each day. That’s when I started my recovery journey.

The weather was colder today then the day it happened. My heart was beating harder in my chest. I felt sick. I paused to collect myself but tears were already flowing down my cheeks. Silent was my pain but it was so visual written all over my face. I touched my cheeks and felt the hot salty tears mixing with the salt wind blowing from the sea. Around the next bend and I would see the site of my inner pain.

I carried on walking. My legs and feet felt like lead but I moved forward to confront the past. My past that caused so much suffering to my tormented mind. I rounded the path and there it was, the beautiful beach of tragedy.

My shoes touched the edge of the sand and it felt wrong so I knelt and undid my laces of my trainers and took my socks off. I pushed my socks into my trainers like I used to when I was a child. I picked them up and put my toes cautiously on the sand. I felt the grains work their way through my toes and the feelings grew larger. I needed to get further on the beach but my body didn’t seem to want to continue. I screamed in my head to carry on and I moved.

The tide was in like that fateful day. I could already recall the screams and crying from that day. It was horrible. 

I was on the beach playing in the sand, I was trying to build the best sandcastle I could to impress my friends when I heard the first scream followed by another. All my friends were crying by the edge of the sea. The waves were lapping slowly around a lump. At first I thought they had found a seal or a small beached whale but as I came nearer to the group that gathered I realized the horror of the situation.

The mound that I thought was an animal was something much worse. The image is still ingrained in my mind. It was my brother. He was wet, he had been in the sea swimming. I ran and shook him begging him to wake up. He was my little brother and I needed him to stop playing his silly jokes and just wake up. His eyes were closed.

I don’t remember much else from that day or the weeks that followed. The inquest had said he had drowned. No one had noticed that he was drowning until it was too late. My friend Anna was the one who had noticed and dragged him from the sea to the beach. That is when I had noticed his limp, wet body begging him to wake up. 

For weeks I kept hoping he would run along the beach and I would know it was a mistake or that it was a joke that he took too far. But he never came back. 

I’m glad I came back after all this time. I had left home soon after I turned sixteen away from the grief of my parents. They had never blamed me but I couldn’t help but feel guilty for not looking after him better and had to leave to run away from the pain. 

I felt better like i had found the closure I needed. I made my way back to the path and made my way back to my childhood home. I opened the old rusty gate and walked up the little path to the front door. I rang the doorbell and my mother answered. As soon as she saw me her eyes filled with tears and she embraced me drawing me into the house. My father came to see who had arrived and also embraced me and we all cried together from happiness and the pain of the separation that I had imposed upon us all because of the heartache I felt. It was over.