“I’ll just ask.”
“Even better.”
So I walked over.
I came around the side of the family because the main path was still blocked.
Wet sand sucked at my sandals.
The closer I got, the less funny the whole thing looked.
Nobody was partying. Nobody was drunk. Nobody was even relaxed.
They were concentrating.
One man was testing the chair with both hands.
A teenage girl held a towel open.
Another woman had a small bag containing medication and bottled water.
Then the crowd shifted. And I saw her.
An older woman sat in a wheelchair at the edge of the sand.
She was tiny. Not naturally tiny. Illness tiny.
Her arms looked fragile under a pale blue blouse.
A scarf covered her head.
One of the women crouched beside her. “Ready, Mom?”
The older woman smiled. “I’ve been ready for 40 years.”
Nobody around them laughed.
My stomach dropped.
The daughter stood. “Okay. Same plan. Slowly.”
Four adults moved into position around the wheelchair.
One at each side.
Two behind.
Someone removed the footrests.
The older woman said, “Don’t drop me. I’d hate for that to be the family story.”
That made them laugh.
Real laughter. Nervous laughter.
The kind people use when they’re afraid to cry.
I stopped walking.
The grandmother who’d complained was still nearby.
She saw what I saw. Her face changed too.
One of the sons crouched in front of his mother.
“We’re going to lift on three.”
She nodded.
“One.”
Everyone tightened their grip.
“Two.”
The older woman looked toward the water.
“Three.”
They lifted her. Not the wheelchair.
Her.
One person supported her shoulders. Another her hips.
Two more took her legs carefully.
She weighed almost nothing.
They carried her across the soft sand toward the heavy chair waiting in the shallows.
That was why they’d brought it.
A normal beach chair would fold.
A wheelchair would sink.
The wooden chair gave her somewhere stable to sit while the water moved around her.
I covered my mouth. Nobody had explained anything to me.
They didn’t have to.
The whole scene rearranged itself.
The shouting. The running. The person checking the current. The chair. The blocked path. The medical bag. The urgency.
They weren’t acting entitled.
They were trying to make something difficult happen safely.
The family lowered the woman onto the chair.
Two men kept both hands on it.
Water reached just above her knees.
She gasped.
Everyone froze.
“Too cold?” somebody asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
Then she laughed. “I forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
“How cold the sea is.”
Her daughter started crying.
The older woman reached for her hand. “Don’t do that yet.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Well, try.”
More laughter.
I stood there feeling like the worst person on the beach.
The grandmother who’d complained walked toward the younger woman.
“I owe you an apology.”
The daughter wiped her face. “You didn’t know.”
“I still shouldn’t have shouted.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t.”
The daughter smiled. “We did block the path.”
Even then. Even after being shouted at.
She apologized.
That somehow made me feel worse.
I hadn’t shouted. I hadn’t confronted them. I’d only laughed from a distance and quietly decided they were inconsiderate.
Somehow that didn’t feel much better.
I started backing away.
Then the older woman noticed me. “You coming in?”
I looked behind myself.
She was definitely talking to me.
“Me?”
“You’re standing there like somebody told you bad news.”
Several people laughed.
I felt my face burn.
“I’m fine.”
She pointed toward the water.
“It’s freezing. Apparently nobody mentioned that part.”
One of her sons said, “You grew up here.”
“Memory improves things.”
I smiled despite myself.
Then the daughter beside her looked at me.
“I think you’re Denise.”
That startled me. “How do you know?”
She pointed toward Paul. “Your husband told my brother you’d come over to see if we needed help.”
Of course he had.
Paul, apparently, had managed to make my nosiness sound charitable.
“Do you need anything?”
The daughter looked around. “Actually, could you move that towel bag farther from the water?”
I nearly laughed from relief. “Absolutely.”
So I moved the bag.
Then another.
Then I helped keep two small children from stepping directly into the path while the family worked.
That’s how I ended up hearing the story.
The woman in the chair was named Margaret.
It was her 69th birthday.
She had metastatic pancreatic cancer.
The family didn’t tell me how long doctors had given her.
They didn’t need to.
Everyone was behaving like time had become something physical they could feel leaving.
Margaret had five children.
Three lived out of state.
One lived nearly four hours away.
The youngest, Anna, lived nearby and had been helping with most of Margaret’s care.
Getting every child, spouse, and grandchild in one place had taken months.
At first, they’d planned lunch.
A nice restaurant. Cake. Pictures.
Then Anna remembered something their mother had said years earlier.
“When we were kids, she’d bring us here,” Anna told me. “Every summer.”
Margaret loved the sea.
But arthritis had eventually made walking across sand impossible.
Later came the wheelchair.
The family still brought her to the beach occasionally, but she always stayed above the sand near the promenade.
“She’d sit there and watch everyone else go in.”
Anna looked toward her mother.
“Last year she said, ‘I suppose I’m done with the water now.'”
Anna hadn’t forgotten.
When doctors told them this birthday might be Margaret’s last, Anna asked:
“If you could do one thing, what would you pick?”
Margaret said, “Get my feet in the sea.”
