This is the follow-up piece I wrote for myself. I drove my car to the spot in the first story and wrote by the light of my 1993 powerbook Duo 210. If you haven’t read the first one, please read it before you read this one.
Beach Scene 2
It’s been just over a year since that day on the beach, and I haven’t been back out on the board since. It wasn’t a conscious decision – it just happened that way, but somehow I knew that Greg would be there waiting for me when I finally could go out again.
It’s been less than a year since Greg was killed in an car accident, but somehow every time I think of Greg, I don’t see him in Oscar. I still see him running up to the beach out of the last wave, his smile telling me he isn’t finished yet. I hope that’s the way I’ll always remember him, because I know that was the way he lived. He wasn’t finished yet, but this time I couldn’t just tell him to go ahead and stay a little longer. I wish with every thing that I am that I could have just willed him to live that night, but it just didn’t happen that way.
My night trips to Ft. Fisher have all but stopped, as they have been replaced by trips to the place where Greg ran up to see the surf that day. I still remember it all, and even in the dark I can still see him standing there, looking out on life and God. I try to imagine what he saw that day. I wonder if he had any idea that he would die so young. I ask myself if he ever realized how many lives he touched and changed by simply being himself.
The Beach Scene has changed drastically tonight, the cold keeping me from the water. The happiness of that warm September day seems to have represented all that was good, but tonight I realize that I did not see all that was good. Gregory Lyn Cooke died nearly a year ago, and had I known it was going to happen that day in September, I would have gone back out in the water with him. Although I would give anything to have him barge into my apartment and tell me that we were going out, I know that through his death, Greg became a martyr of some sort.
I owe my new life to Greg. After he died I realized how important he had really been to me, and how he had touched so many people with just his smile. I don’t smile nearly as much as I need to, or as much as Greg wants me to, but I am trying. How much importance does man place on a smile or a friendly attitude? Probably not much, but just one smile has changed my life forever.
I plan to visit Greg one more time here on the beach. In the spring when the weather finally turns warm enough to ride the surf, I want to stand where he stood, see what he saw, and finally ride the wave like the one he rode throughout the entirety of his life.
Posted by Alvin P. Phillips |