An old friend is gone

This image is all that is left of this driftwood.  It has been a stalwart monument on our little beach for as long as I can remember.  Certainly for the past twenty-seven years. 

It sat above the tide line on a grassy point of a beach where we swam, watched sunsets, collected rocks, skipped stones, swam in the phosphorescence, watched meteor showers, threw sticks for our border collie and shepherd, laughed at the antics of little puppies and watched our families grow. 

It watched over us through it all. 

Last year a storm finally was its undoing. 

I didn't know it then, but I know now it was a harbinger of things to come. 

But here is what I know. 

The monument is gone.  The memories are not.  Its etheric imprint is still on that beach.  I still see it in my mind's eye, even though when I visited that beach earlier this week it was not physically there, but I saw it.  Through the rain and my tears I saw it. 

One lonely stick stood against the sky holding the place of that tree I had assumed would always be there.

But nothing lasts forever I was told once not long ago.

That was wrong.

Love lasts forever.

True love of a sibling, a child, a pet, an aunt, an uncle, a mother, a father, an in-law, a grandparent, a friend will last forever.

I believe that.

I have to.