It is no secret that I loathe the summer time.
With every sunrise I pray for its death, unable to find a redeeming quality in the scorching heat and blinding sun. People flock to the beaches to soak it in, and all I wonder to myself is “Why?”
It’s something I really can’t make myself see the other side of.
And yet, when I go for a walk on the morning of the calendar date of November 19th, I find myself coming upon the gate of a local beach.
I have lived near this lake community for over four years now. I know that this beach is here, I spend countless summer afternoons wondering why people want to cram like sardines into it, and yet, somehow, on this morning, just shy of three weeks since my beloved Halloween, it occurs to me that I’ve never truly looked at it.
Before I seem to know what my feet are doing, just moments ago trying to lead me to the house where a pair of flying ghosts had roamed back in October, they are now carrying me to the edge of the beach’s gate. I peer in, at the empty sand, the empty lifeguard stands...and, although I’m happy that it isn’t summer, that the place isn’t packed with people who love a season I can no longer comprehend, relieved, even, that it's not here and won't be again for awhile, I can’t help but feel a sense of desolation. The scene looks so lonely, so sad.
Like a funeral, with no one in attendance but me.
Why do I want to cry when I feel no connection to the deceased?
But as I look closer, I can see reflections of those that visit this beach in July and August. I can hear the echoes of their happy cries as they relish in this season that they’ve waited the whole year to meet again. I feel an ache as the water meets the sand, feeling that pain and emptiness of a season gone by. I know it all too well myself, don’t I?
Though I don’t care much for seasons beyond Halloween and fall, there is a heaviness I feel when I think about a season or holiday, any season or holiday, even one I loathe as much as summer, coming to an end. There is someone out there who loves it. Someone out there who waits for it, as I wait for Halloween. And there is a world that dissolves when it ends. The remnants of that world sit there, quietly waiting to be noticed, by someone who might, albeit briefly, be able to wake up their barren fields with ghosts of the past, and hopes for the future; remind them that they exist. The calendar end of something never takes everything with it, though it certainly tries.
I think about those summer ghosts now, as I turn away from the beach, and I shed a tear for anyone who loves something seasonal. As I turn back toward that house I’d been looking for, where the flying ghosts beckoned just three short weeks ago, I think I feel their absence even more. The sad, empty space where magic dwelled not long ago. Everything is so quiet now. So empty. So colorless. So dead.
Like a beach at the edge of wintertime.
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