Abbey Hill Literary 4th Quarter: Third Place Winner
CLOSURE
by Anne Miller
The ocean's storm-chopped waves clawed at the beach and, in minutes, removed all traces of the name scrawled roughly across the wet sand. Hannah began again; dug her toes in, curling them through the coarseness, forming lines, curves, angles. She knew her work was fleeting, knew as the next wave came and washed over her feet that her canvas would once again be rendered blank.
She wrapped her arms tighter around her in a hug meant to warm and comfort, but which did neither. Her thin sweater was as inefficient against the wet wind as her hastily drawn letters were against the onslaught of storm-incited waves.
She wished she could bring herself to use a more permanent medium, find some way to emblazen the name across the sky or carve it into a mountain, or even write it on a piece of paper. But why should she? The name was already carved into stone, the name along with one lone date. More than enough permanence.
A voice, barely audible above the roaring of the ocean, cut through her thoughts.
“I thought to find you out here.”
She did not turn to acknowledge the speaker. He knew she had heard him, or if he didn’t, he knew better than to push her to answer.
“It will be dark soon.”
It was dark now: the ocean, churned up from the storm, the wet sand, the orange and red of the setting sun. It was dark now.
Silence. Then an awkward hand on her shoulder.
“You’re not alone in this.”
No, she wasn’t alone. She had her words in the sand. She had her pain. She had countless people telling her they knew how she felt, yet she was the only one out here at the water’s edge. She was the only one standing here lying to herself, blaming the misty wind for the salt she tasted on her lips.
Another moment; a squeeze on her shoulder.
“I’ll see you once you come inside.”
No, you won’t, she thought as he retreated. Nobody saw her anymore. If they did, they wouldn’t keep talking about her as if she couldn’t hear. They wouldn’t discuss her like she wasn’t there. “We’re so worried about her,” they said. “How can we help?”
Her words in the sand were more enduring than their sentiments.
“How can we help? What can we do?”
Useless. Hannah scoffed as the next wave ripped the word from the sand before she had finished the last ‘s’.
It wasn’t just his name she offered to the ocean. Her feelings were presented too, sent as a missive, carried on the waves, away to nowhere. Nobody received her message, and so she was free to say what she wished.
Angry. The bottom of the ‘g’ survived – a smile that mocked her and she carved a great big ‘X’ across it, deep enough that several waves crashed around her before it had disappeared.
I hat… The next wave came too quickly and her sentence was cut off halfway through. …e you.
The ‘you’ was not the same as the name. The ‘you’ was the receiver of the words; the nobody.
The wind was colder now, making her body begin to shiver. The chattering teeth hadn’t stopped her, but a shaking foot meant an end to the evening. She finished as she did every day. One word that would be gone before she reached the dunes.
Why?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A week passed before Hannah came back to the seaside. The sun was brighter today, the sea calmer. She took advantage of this, what could be the last day she would be able to come for a while. Winter was looming on the horizon. Even now, she was wearing long pants, though they were rolled up to her knees, and a heavy sweater.
The writing did not begin immediately, it never did. She allowed the waves to wash over her feet, enjoying the icy bite of the water on her bare skin. The pain felt good; it kept her here, gave her something to focus on so her mind could remain in the present and not wander into thoughts that would cause more agony than freezing cold ever could.
Eventually, her feet numbed to the chill. That was the amazing thing about your body, after a while it could acclimate to anything.
Almost anything, she amended. Some things you could never get used to. Ever.
The words began then and lasted most of the day.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Months passed. The sand that had been so abused, dug and carved with words of hurt and anger, remained vacant and empty. Winter came, blustery and cold, dismal and grey, and lasted far longer than it was welcome. But eventually the air warmed, the days lengthened, and winter eased into spring. New life appeared in the form of birds and flowers and buds on the trees; new life, new hope.
Once again, Hannah wrote her words, but this time in a more lasting form. The folded paper was damp, not from the ocean wind for she was not at the beach today, but from the clamminess of her palms. She stood there, semi-permanent words in her hand, eternally stone-etched words in front of her, the only similarity between the two being a name – his name. She spoke the words once out loud, reading from the paper though she could have recited them from memory – there were only ten of them – before taking a lighter out of her pocket and setting the letter on fire. She watched it burn there on the stone and did not walk away until it was ash.
That evening, those ten words were written in the sand, far enough from the water that they would last at least until high tide.
Jamie-
I’ll love you forever.
I’m ok now.
Love, Mommy
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
I am a wife and mother from New Jersey who has been writing since 2003. In my spare time I also enjoy dancing and scrapbooking. I have a B.A. in Graphic Design and work full time for an insurance company.
JUDGE’S COMMENTS:
“Closure” has a lonely lyricism to its language, which effectively evokes its seaside setting and the main character’s struggle with grief. The story offers a satisfying arc, as the main character begins to find a way to reckon with her son’s death. Her rituals of writing to her son in the sand (where the words are washed away by water) and on paper (where they are burned away by fire) develop the theme of impermanence—and the ending suggests that something has shifted. The story’s title is overstated, however, and the prose—which is mostly lovely and restrained—occasionally flirts with sentimentality. This story responded to prompt 1.