Meet Me at the Lighthouse

I made my way across the disintegrating asphalt.  The parking lot was in serious need of repaving, but the general lack of traffic to this area of the shoreline meant the city brushed it off.  I didn’t mind the dispirited appearance.  It wasn’t glamorous, but it had once been ours. 

The wooden fence that stretched for several hundred feet between the asphalt and the sand was splintered and many panels were either split or torn away completely.  It had been there for decades and the wood was discolored and eroding.  The rusty signs that prohibited littering went ignored, as was evident by the trash strewn across the area.  The stretch of sand that followed the rickety fence was short, and the Beachgrass was overgrown and tangled.  It required effort to cross over safely, and effort wasn’t a word in the vocabulary of beach-goers.

The only clear path to the water required walking to the old lighthouse and taking the crooked stone stairs down to the sand.  The hundred-year-old white limestone tower stretched upward at only twenty-five feet.  The structure, which was once pure-white, was tainted by years of harsh weather, and the red paint on the parapet was chipping.  The three small windows that followed the path of the spiral staircase inside were dusty and each had cracks, no doubt caused by the hailstorms that winter brought in.  The only way inside was through the heavy wooden door that was never locked, but required significant force to open.

The lighthouse’s interior was in no better shape.  A thick layer of dust covered every surface of the small entrance room, from the lone wooden chair to the small counter space on the other side.  Directly across from the door was a closet, likely full of supplies for maintenance.  I had never opened it.  An old rusty stove and a sink that steadily dripped every few seconds sat to the left of the doorway.  The cabinets were bare and one of the doors was attached only by the bottom hinge.

My best friend Leslie came with me once.  She said the place was eerie.  It was.  A new lighthouse had been built ten years ago just a mile away.  The city still kept the light on in the old house, but it never shone as bright as it once did.  Its insufficiency was covered up by the beaming lights of the shiny tower down the road.

I took the narrow stairway to the parapet where we used to sit and gaze into the moon’s reflection in the water and the glittering rocks lining the shore.  Imagining that it—that the world—was laid out just for us, right there, right beneath our feet.  We were ready to conquer it together, Dylan and I.  I remembered the way the diamond ring shimmered in the soft, glowing light pouring from the lighthouse beacon (it didn’t seem weak then) and suddenly, every breath felt heavy in my chest as I watched as the waves roll in.  Even from twenty feet above, I could feel the suffocating grip of the icy water as it crashed into the jagged rocks below.

Crash.  Like the drunk driving the Ranger that smashed into Dylan’s Civic.

Crash.  Like steel against steel and the phone against the windshield. 

(Meet me at the lighthouse — he never would again.)

Crash.  Like his body onto the street, adorned with shattered glass and snowflakes.

Crash, crash, crash.  The guilt, the loss, the grief.

I stayed on the parapet all night, riding the waves of broken sobs until I saw his eyes in the ocean.  The brilliant amber light of the sun reflected in the lucent blue water, telling me to let go.