This was your place, Dad.

This was the place you took your family every summer.

Where mother turned “brown as a berry” while dripping sandcastles with your daughters

who would only trade their seat in the sand for a ride on a float with you at the helm.

And the waves rocked us and the sun baked us and love filled us.

This is the place I brought my family

and where my family brought their families

because Josh only wants to go to “our beach”.

And we never did what tourists do because we weren’t tourists.

We were home.

This is the place I came when we knew something was wrong,

when you refused to stay in the hospital because you “weren’t sick”.

You’d never been sick.

Not even a headache.

But you were and you went.

The beginning of the end.

This place is still yours.

I feel you everywhere.

In the blue and green of the ocean

and the whitest sand of the “prettiest beaches I’ve ever seen”.

In the wind near the surf and the sidewalks along the beach road where you walked until you couldn’t.

There are some places I can’t go yet,

where walking in the door opens an empty space

 where the sound of people calling out your name should be

and there will be empty barstools where we should be sitting

and you would order grits and hug the chef

and squeeze my hand, at least once while we were eating.