You died during the winter, while wet snow melted and mixed on our faces with the tears we all cried. It was hard to image the summer, but that’s the way I want her to remember you if she can.

When winter stops biting, and the sting of your death has softened some, and we can walk barefoot in the shallow tidal pools that form like they sometimes do, I know she’ll be looking for you, the way she looks for the sand crabs. She can never catch them, not the way you could.

For you, they crawled into your hand and did tricks and skips and ended with flips as you poured them into buckets, so we could watch them swim in umbrella shade of the summer sun.  More and more, she would cry, and we’d watch as you dug for the more that none of us could ever seem to find. 

I still listen to her laughs from that day and hope that you do too, as they flew from her little girl lips and are carried away with the ocean breeze to be kept in a place of only happy memories.

She’ll look for you at the end of the boardwalk, just like the rest of us still do, even though she probably won’t remember most of you. She remembers that summer and the sand crabs and some of you.

The first summer will be the hardest, I think. I’ll sit in the shade and listen to her ask about the boy who took her swimming last year and played in the waves with her and the one that caught all the sand crabs; what was his name? I whisper your name with my smile as I look back at her, loving the little things she remembers about you. In the end, it’s always the littlest of things that never get forgot.

I kneel in the rough, broken shells at the shoreline as the surf licks at my feet. They squirm deep in the sand, and we can feel the tips of their feet tickle the skin on our fingers as they remain just out of reach, the way the shadow of your memory continues to tickle our lives, forever now, just out of our reach.

She sits in the sand with her shovel and empty bucket, looking towards the boardwalk, waiting for the memory of you. Maybe he’ll be here next summer, she says as we pack up for the day.

Maybe, I say.

– Jessica Simpkiss