One of my favorite beaches in Rhode Island. It’s stunning and the little seashore town is trapped in time. It looks like an 1890s resort town. Still. White clapboard walls. Rustic. In February 2009, a month after my father died, I drove back home to Rhode Island. We were all still reeling. It felt wrong to be separated from my mother. She suggested we go for a walk on this beach – not our normal beach, not the beach we know by heart. I can’t remember why she suggested it. But it had been years since I had been there. It was a very cold day. We got there just at sunset. The play of light and shadow on the water, the white buildings, the sand dunes, was breathtaking. We were both so sad – we have looked at these pictures since, and we look at the beauty and all we remember is how sad we both were – but our sadness made us open to the extreme beauty of the day and the place. These pictures are filled with my father, and the new and awful sensation of his absence.
As most of you know, I just moved. I am now right down the street from this very special beach.
My God, how beautiful! I hope the move and the beach transform into not sad.
Donna – it will be a welcome pilgrimage when it gets warm enough. It’s 8 degrees here right now. Big snowstorm coming!
The second photo looks like a Hopper painting. There is beauty in grief.
Not so much beauty in grief, imo, but it can make you open to beauty in OTHER things. that beauty still exists outside of the grief.