At first light, I opened my eyes, which fell on an ashy pile of dying embers in the sand. The fire had gone out. No matter – we would be moving on from this spot as soon as we could collect ourselves and get moving. I wasn’t sure if sleep of this sort, invaded by corrupted dreams, had much value at all. I heard Sarah moaning a few feet away, making the signs of a bad dream – putting her hands up in defensive posture, her feet moving as if to run away, fear in her voice – and put my hand on her back, shaking her awake. I felt the muscles of her back move under my hand, and the transfer of energy went straight to my loins. Under normal conditions of life, this was the sort of small trigger that would turn into arousal, but it seemed impossible to be aroused, or at least satisfied, under these catastrophic conditions. She sat up with a start, disoriented from passing through the veil too quickly, and her frightened eyes roamed around uncertainly for a few seconds before they settled on my face – those lost, distant eyes looking at me but also through me, seeing but not seeing. 

“Sweetie, you were having a bad dream. It’s okay.” The instinct to reassure kicked in, but as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized how monstrously silly they were, that everything was colossally not okay. Her eyes searched around again, and I knew she was trying to decide what was real and what was imagined. Though they were now clouded portals into her shock and sadness and pain, those eyes were still mysterious and arresting and gorgeous, flashing metallic blue with wispy tendrils of green, shining like brilliant nebula hurling their light across the vast chasm of space, and I looked into them and thought of that day in college when we met to go up to the top of the parking garage and watch the sunset, and I brought my CD player, but it wasn’t working for some reason and I was so frustrated because I had wanted the moment to be perfect, and I kept fiddling with the thing and finally she said, “Mark, it’s okay”, and she put her hand on my hand and electricity passed from her body into mine and she smiled the softest smile I’d ever seen almost laughing at me for being so worked up and she said “We don’t have to have the music, I just wanted to be with you” and I looked into those bright eyes and I knew that she loved me too and the moment was even more perfect than I could have ever planned or imagined. And life had been perfect, like a warm soft blanket, like a good dream where all your mistakes are undone and things happen just the way they should have before you made a mess of them, and for a few moments you realize that redemption is real. But there was a kind of sadness along with the joy, maybe only because I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that life couldn’t always be like this, that the pain and sorrow would come back eventually. Yet it was more than that – it was some heavy forbidden knowledge that was encoded inside of me, though it was scrambled so I could not know the details, and yet I knew that it told of days to come that were terrible beyond imagining. And now I knew exactly what that feeling had meant, because the premonitions had been realized, but on that day on the parking garage fifteen years ago they had just been vague and easy to dismiss, though they would return to me again and again. But in that moment we had stood in the soft, slowly setting sun and looked into each other’s eyes and time had stopped and nothing else had mattered, and her eyes were so deep and shimmering with ancient light that had travelled an immeasurably great distance…

And then I was back on the beach, and disoriented because the memory had been so vivid and all-encompassing that adjusting to the present took a moment, and there were Sarah’s eyes looking up at me, and they were the same as that long-ago day but different, sadder and wiser and deeper and more distant but closer too, and she looked like she was searching me, and she asked, “Are you okay? You looked like you were somewhere else.” Then I realized that she was worried about me in the same way that I was worried about her, and I thought that for all my attempts to play the hero, maybe she was the stronger one after all, and I wasn’t sure what to say. She managed a tiny hint of a smile and said, “Thanks for waking me up.” We cling to the smallest of things for hope and sanity.

I listened to the soft crashing of waves lapping at the shore, smelled the fresh and yet sulfide smell of its microscopic inhabitants, and wished that we could stay there forever, just try to forget about what had happened and take care of each other, basking in the cool ocean wind. Of course that was not to be, but I allowed myself a few indulgent minutes of relaxation while Sarah went to make a puddle a little ways away. She seemed a little bit better today, not quite so adrift, like the washed-up clumps of seaweed scattered along the broad, smooth shore. And I felt a little better, not quite so angry and hopeless and uncaring whether I lived or died. She came back and sat down next to me and snuggled up close, and we sat there for a little while, not spoiling the moment by talking. I felt very happy, but still didn’t understand quite how happy I was. And now, looking back, I realize that it was the best moment I’d had in a long time, maybe years, or maybe my whole life. After the civilized world had come crashing down, I thought that maybe I could never be happy again, but I was wrong, because it’s hard to be happy when you have more, much more, than you need, when your bank account and 401(k) are measures of self worth, but even though they are growing every day life still seems empty somehow. When all those things are taken away, then spending a few tender minutes arm in arm on the beach with someone you love in the soft early morning is a gift from the universe, more amazing and precious than you could have ever thought possible.