“Would you like to say something?” Devon asked me, but I couldn’t turn to him, couldn’t look at him. I was mesmerized by the dust blending into the sand. “It’s all right,” he said after I didn’t answer him. “We don’t really need words, do we? The waves say whatever we need.” My eyes fluttered closed as the last of the gray became lost in the wet shoreline, and I listened to what Devon was hearing. Every time a wave came ashore and then was sucked back into the ocean, it was like a long sigh. I tried to breathe in time with the movement, tried to let the waves do my breathing for me, say the words I should’ve been able to say, but it was so hard. Everything was hard. It had been hard to find Nana on this very beach, dead, smiling at the very wave that moved now. It had been hard to make a decision about arrangements, much easier to sit back and nod wordlessly as Devon made gentle suggestions.
