A day at the beach…sort of
Looking down on the reservoir from the hills above Half Moon Bay
I haven’t posted in over a week because I have been sunk in the pit of Who Cares and What difference does it make? So today I got hold of myself, did all my baseline morning things, and drove to the beach. Here’s the thing: People will tell you that you need to get out of the house, do things, engage with the world, build a new life. It will be a different life, but it can be a good life. But I don’t want to do things without Randy because everything I do reminds me of Randy and that he is gone.
To get to Half Moon Bay from Alameda I have to drive west and cross the Bay Bridge - which is the same route I would follow to visit Randy at Stanford Hospital. I’ve driven it many times by myself so it wasn’t odd to have no Randy - I just listened to a podcast. Once across the bridge the drive is beautiful - along the reservoir, into the green hills, sunny and warm. When you get to the beach, though, it can be cold, overcast, windy. Surfers wear wet suits year round and there are riptides that mean you shouldn’t swim, cliffs and rocks - it’s not an easy beach.
On this day there was a little mist, but most of the marine layer had burned off. It was breezy and I wore a sweatshirt. There were not many people - some families, couples, a couple of brave young women in bikinis, and a lone surfer who appeared to be waiting for the waves to get big enough to ride. Before I even got down to the sand I was overwhelmed by sadness. This was exactly the kind of day trip we had planned to take during the last bit of time Randy had left. But for months he hadn’t felt up to the drive and he had a lot of pain in his legs. I retired in January and the winter weather was so cold that even taking a neighborhood walk was hard because Randy couldn’t stay warm no matter what he wore. And from that point his physical decline was so fast that he couldn’t do much of anything - he was in pain and he slept a lot.
The last vacation we took - just a couple of days - was in March the year before he died. We went to Half Moon Bay and stayed at the Ritz. We had a beautiful room overlooking the ocean and great weather. We went down to the beach one day and then sat on the patio for drinks - it was actually hot. The heat took a toll on Randy and he was very tired so we made just that one short walk to the beach and spent the rest of our time in our room or on the balcony. He was happy to be at the beach, to watch the waves and listen to the surf. He was so accepting of his inability to do all the things we used to do - even going to the restaurants was fraught because the wait staff was not masked and Randy’s suppressed immune system put him at grave risk for Covid and it was unlikely that his body would be able to fight it off.
So now it was just me sitting on the sand watching people enjoy themselves, feeling empty. I stayed for an hour walking up and down the beach because it took me an hour to get there, but I kept wondering What is the point? Why am I here? I just feel terrible and miss Randy more than I would at home. And so much regret - we had plans for these years. Not big plans, nothing out of the ordinary - we didn’t want to be world travelers or go sky diving or bungee jumping. We just wanted to be together, holding hands and talking to each other. And we were denied even that much. So yeah, it was sort of a day at the beach.