There they go, marching at random up the strand.
They are founded in our trust and patience, they are adorned with our attention and affection, and they are constructed of our blood, sweat and tears. They may seem insignificant, or even a bit silly, to inhuman eyes. To human beings they are constructs of the most glorious beauty, and our delight in their building is the greatest of all things. We are children at the beach. Happily reshaping our sandy lives.
Every one of these edifices we build, without exception, is fragile. They are all mortal. And the sea heeds not even our most ardent pleas. At its fancy it rolls over our mightiest efforts as a flood would an anthill.
Still we rail against it, we do our damnedest to hold it back, and rightfully so. Labor as we might nothing stops the waves from eventually washing out these things we've built.
And we are left confused and empty.
It hurts so bad to lose one that we've loved. It hurts SO bad. In English the feeling is called grief, and countless mouths have given it a voice in countless other tongues, since before we even learned to use them. Look at elephants, or a great many other creatures that mourn their dead. They know. What really happens is unspeakable. No language really contains it. We are left with a massive hole inside us; one that will heal, with care, but which will never be filled again.
For all our accomplishments as a species, for all our pride, we are still brought to our knees when this terrible thing happens to each of us. It never really ends. It gets easier, but at no point is it ever truly easy. Our loved one's face is forever gone. They remain in our scrapbooks, in our home movies. Their names are printed on old checks, signed to important documents, etched in stone. They remain in a special place buried deep in our neurons. Therein at least, with the half-light of memory, a shadow of our love is cast.
But a memory cannot be hugged. They are gone. And woe are we.
Most of us go back to our lives, those that are able. We go back to our building in spite of our pain, back to glory and beauty. We know deep down that the loves we build, our sandcastles, are the best things we will ever behold, we know that in fact they are the best things in all of our known universe, and we know that the privilege of being part of them at all is an infinite blessing.
We have our memories, and sometimes following a loss that is all we have. Sometimes the thought of making more of them, of building again, is terrifying.
But the beach awaits, and, though it is hard, the beauty lies in our own hands. We may fear the sea, but we defy it always, with every breath.
Might as well build a sandcastle.
12:52 PM PT: Many thanks for the rescue. I didn't expect that.