Tears of Glass
The photos and following story were first published in 2013. But little did I know, the story wasn’t finished yet.
The beach was gray and windswept. The outgoing tide had left the sand soaked and milling about, miniature rivers running. Shore birds were abundant and squawking, their keen eyes watching us under the diffused midsummer Alaskan sun.
Seashells were everywhere, an offering of exquisite art scattered in open air exhibit. I gathered some. As we walked, I picked those treasures up that were lying there at our feet. I placed them in the pocket of the jacket that wrapped my rounding belly. The little life within me kicked and bumped and fluttered, and I held my man’s hand and breathed deeply of the salty sea air, trying not to feel so desperately sick.
Our first baby. Our first time at morning sickness and bone-weary tired. Our first gathering of soft blankets and littlest clothes. Our first wondering about who this wee person was.
She came to us in the darkest hours of an Alaskan winter night, in a quiet room filled with love and deepest care. We held her there, wrapped in a handmade blanket. We looked at her sweet lips, her thick, dark hair, her little hands and feet, and her closed eyes, and we knew she was ours. Even though her breath had left her, even though we would never hear her cry, she was ours.
Her little body was laid to rest under a wintery Montana sky as we held each other and wept our souls right out.
On another beach, in another state, in another time altogether, I sat in the warm sun, surrounded by thunderous whitewater crashing on a blackest rocky shore. And I thought of our girl, for even her name means that place at the edge of the sea. I sat there, not on sand, not on rocks, but on millions upon millions of tiniest jet-black pebbles all sea-rounded smooth. I scooped them and sifted them, watching them, round and rolling, fall. A glint of green caught my eye. Then another and another, there among the black. Sea glass. Tiniest bits of polished sea glass in green and brown and clear, and maybe even blue. Treasures hidden in the dark. I gathered them, those treasures at my fingertips. The ones they call mermaid’s tears.
There are some things you never let go of: the longing for loved ones, and things to remember them by. The seashells, collected on the beach that day, remind us of our girl. And those tears of glass? They remind us of a Deepest Love that endured through our deepest loss…
“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle…” - King David
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There I was, at the edge of the sea once more. Morning sun cast long shadows across the sand. Roaring in with frothy crowns, the waves weakened, wobbled, and fell, splaying themselves across the sand in their final exhale. These were different waters of the same sea I’d walked along those twenty-five years before while holding my man’s hand, collecting seashells, feeling the flutters of life. These were different waters of the same sea I’d sat with, my hands scooping, pouring, sifting in meditation, finding tears of glass.
I stepped slowly along, fully settling myself here. In this time, in this place, in this moment with these unfamiliar waters of this familiar sea. Hearing, seeing, feeling all of it. The course sand beneath my feet was overlayed with scribbled lines of broken shells left there by the waves. Millions upon millions of them, once scattered across the sea, now gathered here, rising in ridges like so many miniature mountain ranges. And I was in awe of how beautiful broken things are.
Then, I paused, my breath caught. I sank to my knees. There. There among the broken shells was a tiniest bit of sea-polished glass. I gently picked it up and placed it in my open palm, rolled it back and forth with my fingertip. A tear. I closed my fingers around it and held it there. When I opened my eyes, I saw another, and another, and another. For a single tear never falls alone.
On a shelf in our quiet house, thousands of miles away from the ocean’s roar, sits a small glass box. In it are her seashells and all my tears of glass, collected in a bottle.