Love Notes in the Sand

This morning, I walked on the beach.  My sister got great sunrise pictures on her solitary walk yesterday; I had decided to stay inside and catch up on e-mails and other social media.  While I didn't particularly want pictures, I do want to be more intentional with my time.

I was much too early for sunrise, but that's fine.  I needed to get a bit more exercise than I've been getting.  I walked and walked, and I came across this message on the beach, writing encased in a heart:

Married here

2016

Ian and Jen

I spent part of my walk wondering about Ian and Jen.  Are they back to celebrate their 5 year anniversary?  Did their message mark the exact spot on the beach where they pledged their troth?  And if so, what was it about that stretch of beach?

I thought about how old they are.  I pictured young kids, just out of college, getting married on the beach because it was the first place where they got drunk and realized they loved each other.  But it's just as likely that they were two humans on a second or even a third marriage, two humans who felt lucky to find each other in the midst of all the heartbreak that a life can hold.

I suppose I should have wondered who was out there with me on the beach--I might have walked past Jen and Ian and not known it.  There weren't many people out there, and the message must have been put in the sand since the last high tide.

And of course, my poetry brain started thinking of the symbolism of it all, our loves and our lives washed out to sea before we know it.  Or perhaps, I should think of it differently, in a more planetary way:  matter is never destroyed, but simply transformed.  Our love may wash out to sea, becoming part of the larger ocean, the ocean that is coming for us all.