The Horseshoe Crab
A personal essay written for an application in 2021
We went to the beach and placed a flower on a dead horseshoe crab. We cried, hugged, said a few words, and watched the tide come up. Then we laughed at how ridiculous we must look having a funeral for an ancient crustacean.
My brother, my boyfriend, and I were not saying goodbye to the horseshoe crab. Though, it is always sad to see their bodies flipped over, filled with sand or floating on top of the water. In truth, we had just left my mother’s funeral and had gone to the beach to reflect.
The beach was by the bay and past town to the left, down a long road of streets named after states. The road was lined with both small original beach cottages and new beach mc-mansions. To get to the beach, you walk over a dune. A dune that felt like a mountain to me as a child especially when hauling beach chairs and coolers. “My trooper” is what my mother called me when we finally made it to the beach.
I grew up on the beach and have many memories with her there. On it, I built sandcastles, read books, napped, was bitten by horse flies, celebrated the Fourth of July, waited for low tide to go on walks, and swam. It was also my mother’s friend’s favorite spot. On certain days when we went over the dune, they would be there with their beers, sitting under umbrellas.
My mother never understood this, but every time I went home, I would go to the beach. Even in the winter, to go look at the ocean. I had to make sure it was still there, that nothing had changed, that it was still home. When I returned to the beach this year, months after her funeral, I realized something had changed. This time, there was no future of my mother grey-haired sitting on the beach with her friends talking about grandkids, there was just me. I was walking on the beach alone.
As it turns out, my brother wrote a poem about the moment with the horseshoe crab. My mother if she were alive also likely would have written about the moment in her book. She was a writer and in her career as a prosecutor, her writing swayed court opinions with details that broke people’s hearts. When she retired, she joined literary clubs, writing circles and took me to a book-writing convention. She was always writing but never finished her book.
It has been a year now since the day on the beach and there is nothing the grief has not touched. Everything is sandy. My family, relationship, school, career, feelings, and future. Even my writing is different now. If it wasn’t for my mother’s influence, for her heart, for her raising us on that beach, maybe I would not have noticed. I would not have noticed the detail of three adults on a beach placing a flower on an ancient crustacean.
