The Shores of Beaumaris

This is a story about unfinished business.  Business, it sounds so corporate, so official and cold.  There is no message for you here, no wisdom or advice.  This is an attempt to share what was locked away in the subconscious.  This story is a purely selfish endeavor, an attempt to understand a pain that could never heal.

The Shores of Beaumaris, A Welsh Soldier's Tale

I left the best friend I ever had there on life’s road, without explanation or reason, with no closure.  Though I doubt my friend dwells on it at all, the initial wounds I likely caused by that sudden disappearance has eaten its way to the fore of my mind.

I once imagined myself an old man, retired, gazing out at the Irish Sea from the shores of Beaumaris with you.  Our wrinkled, weathered hands intertwined as we breathed in the salty air and listened to the waves as they crashed on the rocky shore.  Not a word was spoken, like many of our conversations words simply did not convey the essence let alone the depth of what was passed between us.

You were a former business tycoon, having saddled and broken the airline industry into a lucrative and efficient enterprise.  I was writing about the things in life that mattered and moved people, stories that revolved around emotion and feelings, the intangibles some might say.  The hard work was behind us.

Too old to scale the castle ruins any longer, we would still bask in their presence, imagining ourselves in that time and place when they were new; when Longshanks waged his war on the Welsh.  I would picture us in that time before the fortresses when peace and sovereignty were the mark of the Welsh people, before the campaigns that ultimately consumed the entire British Isles. 

Then I am back to the present, to that stone cottage along the sea with the hearth ablaze, pushing the damp chill outside with ferocity.  I stoke it to encourage its battle while you finish preparing my tea with milk; a drink that used to offend my American sensibilities with the mere thought, but has been a beginning to our day and our evening respite for all these many years.

I can feel the breeze as we walk slowly to the pub in town.  It’s a little smoky but it’s a working class place for those of us who have seen the harder days of our labors pass.  There are no strangers here as we laugh and revel in the easy banter with our neighbors.  Music and stories fill these evenings with friends, reflecting on the glories of our past with the older patrons and sharing the wisdom from the journey with the younger. 

But it’s always those moments when we steal away to a cozy corner and talk, just the two of us, about life’s revelations and the things that still invigorate our passions.  It’s the easy banter too; it’s the laughter and picking that warm my soul so.  And so it goes through this one particular evening, one not so different from the multitudes we’ve shared.

That was my dream, my hope and maybe the reason I left so long ago.  I took a different path down a road that bent another way.  I’m empty without that banter, your playful jabs.  You understood me better than anyone and knew the right measure of all that I needed.  Mostly it was your healing compassion that I remember best.  You cured my wounded soul and let me tend to yours.

Then I left and opened a fresh wound no doubt, and with no explanation.  It must have been a horrible puzzle left to wonder.  In your typical fashion you wanted to lend your nurturing aid fearing some grievous injury had befallen me. 

There was grievous injury but the worst of the physical damage was not mine, and that was what harmed me most in the end.  I could not be released from my suffering as death released the suffering of my comrade, my friend.  My choice was no choice because I lived beyond that infamous day; I received no coup de gras.

For the longest time it was a festering sore that I had no courage to describe to you so that you might give aid.  I didn’t understand and couldn’t explain why a deep part of me welcomed the suffering and pain it brought, the guilt of having lived beyond that most horrid day. 

So I was silent and prayed that God would grant my coup and as the days wore on and my evident silence troubled you, my pain and fear mounted. 

I slipped away to a place inside myself.  I hid from the world and kept safe the last vestiges of the humanity and hope that were once mine.   It was a cocoon to help weather the storm, sheltered from the rot of my injuries, to bide me time so that I could heal.

Healing came, though gradual, and as I began to find that part of me so long lost I found emptiness I could not recall.  But I can never go back.  I am numb, and without humor as if I woke from a coma that consumed so much more than mere time.

The wound has healed and my mind is awake now.  It is a silent place inside where I dwell these days and recount the dreams we shared; tears well in my eyes as I think of you, my greatest hope and best friend, now lost.

I still visit the Isle of Anglesey and look out on the Irish Sea from the shores of Beaumaris, where we stood and dreamed together so many years ago.