Beginning of the End

We passed by a cemetery along the highway the other day. Yards and yards of white crosses dotted across the vast expanse of land. It's difficult to grasp that each cross represents somebody who came and left, whose story is buried beneath that plot of soil.

That's what I thought of when I looked out into the ocean, watching the water dart in and out, taking shells and sea-polished stones away and leaving them behind. That's what I thought of when I felt the sand fly in puffs from under my bare feet as I darted aimlessly across the beach, chasing after a plastic replica of the sun. That's what I thought of when I realized the friends around me would fade from the foreground of my life in a matter of months.

Our skin and bones, ashes and dust are recycled in generations, waiting to be drawn from the earth to form another life. Perhaps the same happens with our stories. We come and go no more significant than another wave crashing and receding from the shoreline, leaving perhaps a pebble or ribbon of kelp here and there.

Hey You. Tell me, do our bones collide?
Did our bones collide?

Why did our bones collide?