Tide goes in, tide goes out. But what stays is a whole world unto itself.

You’d think being a fisherman’s daughter, I would have understood all his crazy sayings by now. It’s too cold on the shore for anyone else, but fitting for me to be here; leaping from rock to rock across the pools just like I had as a child. I chase my memories among the battering of onshore winds that deafen me to anything but my thoughts. My ballet flats perch atop a thin black rock and my arms reach out in balance against the brooding gray sky. Little droplets of rain sting like barbs when they land on the back of my blouse. The whole world is in mourning for the Fisherman.

His funeral was nice enough. The minister spoke of how astounded the townsfolk were that the Fisherman had succumbed to an infected wound. We agreed that anything other than a grand and glorious death, going down with his beloved Christabelle in a great storm, felt like he had been cheated. His favorite jacket lay forlornly on the casket, longing for the life that had lived inside it and acted out our own hollowness before our eyes.

The wind blasts into my ears and slaps my hair across my face. I scrape it away behind my ears and admire the little collection of cottages that protect the dunes as much as they protected me. On cue, Postmaster Higgins waves in a big arc from the top of the sandy cliff. I translate and return my answer in a large arc of my own; I’m fine, thanks for checking. Even when I was alone in our old house, I was never lonely. The times when the Fisherman was delayed, and I wandered to the jetty, the townsfolk would stand beside me and wait for Christabelle’s bright red mast to appear on the horizon. They stood with me again today in the church, even when there was no hope of a sighting.

The townsfolk had their own favorite stories to tell about the Fisherman. The men told of his yarns and dealings at the tavern with uproarious laughter. Everyone knew he had loved many women in the town and they shared their own memories of conversations, activities, and understandings. 
My memories, of course, are different, but mean the most to me because they are mine. Just like me, the townsfolk had taken their own piece of the Fisherman with them and hidden it deep in their hearts.
Their memories are as solid as the rock I stand on, with a life of their own, separate from anything else.

The wind whips up loose sand and blows ripples across the surface of the rock pool. It distorts my view, but not my understanding.    Tide goes in, tide goes out. But what stays is a whole world unto itself.