(Written June 4, 2022)
Every year since I was eleven, I have gone to the same beach house with my grandparents, parents, and extended family. We would spend a full week together, laughing and sharing, reading on the shore, and swimming in the sea. We found our favorite restaurants and went back year after year. The beach house was a sanctuary for me, a constant in an otherwise ever-changing life. As I grew older, I began to dream of what it would be like to bring my own children to our small slice of beach-side paradise.
My grandparents both passed away within a year of my daughter’s diagnosis. My grandfather never saw me become pregnant. My grandmother never knew my daughter was sick.
Shortly after my daughter died, I went back to the beach house with my immediate family. Still recovering from our fear of COVID, we went alone, just the four of us. No aunts, no uncles, no cousins. Everywhere I looked, though, I saw my daughter. I saw where she should have been. I saw her in the empty bedroom we would have shared, in the sand on the beach where we would have played, in the soft ends of the waves lapping along the shore.
In my dreams, we flood the beach house, all of us, together, with joy and love. My baby girl is healthy, happy, alive. She sees the wonder in the sand, the sky, the sea. My grandparents take turns holding her.
I wish they could hold her here, with me, instead of in heaven.
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