Ephemera
On the walk to the chowder house I saw, “Tonya was here, 10/10/25,” scrawled into the sand.
Dating her message displayed the kind of beautiful, naive hope that we could all use more of.
I went back to the beach on the 11th at noon, skeptical, to check; Tonya’s message was gone.
Isn’t that what we all want? To make a mark? To be important to somebody, here and now, and to be missed when we’re gone?
My Mimi left a mark. She cared loyally even for those who wronged her. I often went over for long conversations, ones that felt warmer than the steam coming off the tea. She went on trips with her friends and invited everyone she met to Bible study.
After Mimi was widowed, she opened her house for weekly “Tuesday Tea at Two,” for anyone in the town to drop by for snacks and drinks. She would regularly excuse herself from a compelling conversation with her friends to welcome a newcomer who looked lonely.
The week that she died, her body crumbling under the weight of the cancer, she told me that she was learning about soil composition so she could improve her garden’s yield. I carry her relentless curiosity with me, and I’m inspired by her warmth and selflessness. I hope my attempts to adopt her best traits cement her sandy scribblings.
My friends Janesah and Janeah left marks, too. They were 17, and even though it’s been 12 years, to me the marks still feel like scars.
I remember them for their joy and tenacity. They were two spitfires who loved being twins and hated getting the same Christmas gift in two different colors.
The day after the accident, the local news channels were full of clips of them singing a duet: “I’m bulletproof, nothing to lose… you shoot me down, but I won’t fall, I am titanium.” The tragic irony made me sick. I desperately wished that their sweet voices never made it to the big screen.
Janesah and Janeah taught me to cherish your friends and the days you have with them. To never refuse an early-morning post-sleepover run, even if you have to borrow tennis shoes that are too small. To tell people that you love them, which we never do enough. To take more pictures together.
Sitting on the sand, which was refreshed by the waves overnight, I watch a couple take a selfie. Those pictures will go on a 24-hour social media story, or in a coffee table photo album to be perused once a year at best. But shouldn’t we take them anyway?
My headphones blare: “This skin and bones is a rental, and no one makes it out alive.” I want to know the waves are coming, and to date my sand-scrawled messages anyway.
Within 50 years of my death, this blog post will fail to be migrated to a different provider after an IPO. Or the builds will start failing and nobody will be around to fix them. “The internet is forever,” but the Wayback Machine is unlikely to scrape some obscure developer blog that talks more about death than code.
So, here’s my message, scrawled in the sand that is https://christinacodes.dev:
Christina was here, 10/11/25
P.S. I think about death a lot because it’s significant, but not that scary to me. I know that I’m going to be safer and happier in death than I am in life. What a gift.