Beyond That, the Sea

by Laura Spence-Ash

The present’s hardly there; the future doesn’t exist. Only love matters in the bits and pieces of a person’s life.

A year is a long time. It’s been over a year since Daddy died and yet there are days when the sheer fact of it surprises her. She’ll think of something to share with him—a book, a grade, the beauty of a Christmas blizzard—and be stunned that she can’

Some secrets are weights to be borne. Others are gifts, little bits of warmth, to be revisited again and again.

I just wanted—we all just wanted—you to be happy, she says out loud, talking up to the blue sky. Why is that difficult for so many people to achieve?

So many things she would have done differently. Regret, she has found, is the loud thing that’s left.

We love people for all sorts of different reasons and in all sorts of different ways, she says. Remember that. And it only gets better, the older you get. Young love isn’t necessarily the best love.