The waves of Life.(Kevin Hughes) I think I was only five years old when the first wave of Life, lapped up the shores of Time.
I only remember how my Grandmother held me close and me looking at how big her chin was.
I didn’t know she had Cancer. I didn’t know she was going to die. The Ocean of Life sent a gentle wave up onto the beach of Lives.
Washing away her footsteps in the sand.

The second time, I was only ten years old. A terrible accident. A Classmate, friend, and neighbor, exactly my age…washed away by a wave of Life.
We were all kids, it seemed wrong to us. The Adults were in stunned shock. His walk on the beach was for only a short stretch…the steps in the sand were not deep. The pain of loss was. The waves kept coming.

I was still to young, only fourteen when my Best Childhood friend, lost his Sister to a revenge killing by a Drug Dealer at the wrong house. She was only sixteen. She was pretty…and tall, her walk should have been filled with "eager to please her dates", and a future that her mind, which was sharp and curious, should have forged a memorable Life. But the waves came, washing away all but the guilt and righteous anger at an unnecessary wave generated by hate.

Then the Waves of Life slowed down to just tumbling people around, but depositing them back onto the sands of Life, to continue making footprints. These waves didn’t wash you away. No they merely acted like Rip Currents, tearing a young love apart, failing to pass a grade, or not making a Sports Team, getting a part in the Play, or asked to a Dance. These are the waves of Life we all have to struggle back to the beach from.

Jobs were lost, or found. Homes were abandoned, or built anew. Careers were found. Life was getting serious…the waves stronger...more impatient. The waves of Life now, in your late teens and early twenties…they had a sense of “Hurry” about them. And they came in sets, some small and just barely strong enough to dislodge an old habit, or let go of a Sport you used to love. Books became a necessity for advancement and no longer a way to travel the world, learn new thing, and stand on the Shores of Life in places you would never visit.

A Big Wave might come along: the loss of your first True Love (and all the dreams that went with that), the first waves of Independence and Self Support start to wash away your dependence on your Parents…College, or the Military to act as a transient holding pen for your future. Like being in a Shark Cage in open water. The waves surround you as you tread water…hanging in place, still in sight of the beach, but aware of the giant unknown behind you as it laps up against your choices, decisions, and action.

Now, occasionally, a huge wave hits. One kind knocks you up onto the deep dry sand for you to build castles, memories, and the warm sunburns of growth. The other kind…hit hard…dragging you to the edge of having your own footprints taken from the sand. I had both. One brought me my Kathy…and all the memories that love, companionship, trust, and friendship tangle you up in like so much kelp- or seaweed. That wave leaves you drenched in Life.

The other kind, well that wave took away my Sister. Changed the lives of her children, my parents, and my siblings. You have to fight those waves for a long time. They drag you around, and pull you under at unexpected times. I don’t think, if you don’t have the first kind of Huge Wave, the one that brings you Love and Caring…you can ever swim strong enough to get out of the Big Bad Waves. You drown in the waves of things you cannot change, can’t stop from happening either. It is hard to get your feet on the shore, let alone the sand.

Sometimes, someone else’s wave has to buoy you up as you bob around in deep water. Combined those waves can push you gently back to shore, a little wet, a little tired, and more than a little aware of waves that hit.

Then the waves gather steam. Life leaves tracks in the sand for years, decades, half centuries…the sand is covered with footsteps. Yours, those that walk with you, some where footprints came so close together, you may have felt like only one track was left in the tidal edges. And then a lumbering wave hits. It isn’t very tall, but it is strong …and inevitable. It is the wave of Age. It doesn’t tower over any of the other Waves.

It is merely thicker, stronger, more insistent. It laps up against your calves, bumps against your knees, thrashes your hips before smashing into your chest and shoulders. Leaving only your head to wallow in memories of all the other waves of Life that have washed over you. Your body becomes limp and lingering in the water of Life being sucked up into this last wall of water. A wave none of us can avoid.

It eventually clears the beach of any sign of your footsteps. Only a few, who rode out some of the waves of your life by surfing along with you for a few sets, will see even a trace of you left in the sand. For some, your last wave will be one of their biggest waves, knocking them off their feet, and tumbling them around in the turbulence before tossing you…a little lonelier…back on the beach. To leave your fresh tracks…and only in your mind will footsteps long forgotten place a toe again in the water.

And then…the beach is clean again. The water…calm. The Waves of Life waiting for the birth of a new set of tracks in the sand. No one knows what waves of Life the deeper part of meaning will throw at the new set of tracks. Warm safe waves? Towering misunderstood waves? Some combination of waves that lead to you pondering how interesting your life was when that last wave hits.

Maybe, just maybe…the waves will leave you content with a Life well lived, loved, and laughed. For those, the last waves of Life, are submerged in warm Caribbean Water, with barely ripple to disturb you as you drift in an eddy of memories, loved ones, and good times. Some of that warm water will travel upstream…and those who are still battered by the waves of uncertainty in life, will feel the warmth and touch of your waves. Waves that give them hope, forgiveness, and peace.

I had a wave recently, that forty years ago would have crushed me and dragged me into the undertow of: “Why? It’s not fair. He was to young.” Now, though, it was a wave that pushed up the good memories of him, leaving a Hight Tide mark behind. The wave washed away all the might have been’s, could have beens, and any detritus that might have washed up with old wounds, petty disagreements, or bad memories.

His wave came and got him. He is at peace. My wave let go and let him sail away to the new sea awaiting us all at the end. His life, now a small shell I picked up with delight on the shores of Time. To be treasured…and…every once in a while, to be taken out and shown the paths we travelled together- until my own last wave surges in to pull me from shore.

The Waves of Life are relentless, but not ruthless.

The sand won’t remember our passage, but other footsteps will.

The bigger ocean, the one with no conditions, the ocean of love, will be the wave we ride into a much longer glorious wave.

That wave could come today, maybe tomorrow, maybe next year…no one knows. Waves come and go as they will. The weather of Life Changes daily. I stay on the beach more now, and look for tracks. Including my own. Sometimes the Waves of Life push me up to look in the dunes, other times they pull me down like the tide to see the things revealed when the water is pulled away.

And sometimes, I just want the shells.

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