Back to the Start

"If I can't relate to you anymore, then who am I related to?"

We talked for an hour and a half on the drive from Chapel Hill, one of the best conversations we’ve ever had and easily the single best in quite a while. I asked a million questions about the years before and after I was born. Why did he and my Mom move to North Carolina? Why Emerald Isle? I wanted every detail.

My parents moved to North Carolina in 1977, but it wasn’t the original plan. They were actually driving from New York to Florida. My Mom started crying in the passenger seat. She didn’t know where they belonged but her heart was further north. My father loved Florida but he loved my mother more and so he turned the car around.

They stopped to visit his best friend Pete in Swansboro, North Carolina. Pete’s family owned an Italian restaurant and they ended up offering my Dad a job washing dishes.

My parents officially made the move on August 1, 1977. I thought the house on Cedar Street was the only place they lived during this chapter, but that was incorrect. They started in a trailer over the bridge, technically in Peletier.

They bought Salt Creek Surf & Skate in Emerald Isle in 1978. I learned that the location I remember is not where it started out. The shop first opened on a back road, connected to a skate park. You had to walk through Salt Creek to access the park. Which seems a good business model until kids start breaking bones. The fear of lawsuits wasn’t fun and so they moved to a better location, the corner of Bogue Inlet & Emerald Drive, a short walk from the pier. No skate park and so “Salt Creek Surf & Skate” gave way to “Salt Creek Surf Shop.”

I learned all of this on the phone, before arriving in Emerald Isle. And after more than an hour, I wasn’t finished asking questions.

The baby born before me. Jesse. A boy. I knew he died the day that he was born. I knew that it was incredibly hard for my parents. But it never occurred to me to ask about Jesse’s body. My brother was born, which means he had a body and what did they do with his body?

“Oh it was awful,” my Dad told me. “We had Jesse cremated and they gave us his ashes in a plastic container. We went down to the beach early one morning to scatter his ashes. I couldn’t get the container open. We had just moved there and we were heartbroken and I couldn't get the thing open. It took me so long. That was such a dark time for us.”

My Dad is a lifelong surfer. He said he likes the idea that every time he’s in the ocean, Jesse is also there, along with every other surfing friend whose remains were given to the sea.

If you’re a surfer then you know what I’m talking about. We call it simply, “a paddle out.” Someone died and so there’s sadness but these events are also beautiful. They might be the best thing that happens in the surfing community. Because people come together, not only to celebrate a life but to physically surround a grieving family, so they know they’re not alone.

I hated that my parents were alone.

“Will you tell me where exactly? What beach?” I asked.

“It was the pier and we just started walking.”

“Do you remember which direction?”

“East. I would say a quarter mile east of the pier.”

***

I had one full day in Emerald Isle. My friend Eric Brown met me there, to take some photos and for us to get some time together. This week marked the five-year anniversary of the death of Eric’s daughter Pearl. On top of that Pearl had passed away in Nashville, where Eric and his family lived for nearly two decades. Nashville was in the news and heavy on his heart after the mass shooting that happened five days prior.

As we took our first steps on the beach, I told Eric I wanted to be careful. I wanted to spend part of this day honoring the loss that my parents experienced, but I didn’t want to bring up painful memories or feelings for him. If I needed to go alone, that was certainly okay.

“I can handle grief. The only thing I can’t handle is people making light of grief, or ignoring it.”

With that, we kept walking.

***

I was supposed to fly from North Carolina to Nashville for some work, but my flight kept getting delayed due to weather. I called the airline to ask about my options. It was looking like I would get stuck in Atlanta overnight.

“I live in Florida. Is there any way I can go home for a night?,” I asked the woman from Delta. “There’s a nonstop from Raleigh to Orlando.”

My heart felt full and tender. I wanted to see my dog. I wanted to see my parents.

I cashed in 30,000 SkyMiles and went home for 18 hours. I hugged my Mom and Dad, picked up Gracie, slept in my bed, my little pup cozy in her preferred spot against my back. We slept in and went to Starbucks and unpacked and repacked and before long it was time to head back to my parents’ house, to drop Gracie off again before my trip to Nashville.

Now this flight was delayed so I had a little extra time. Eric had sent the photos and I asked my Mom if I could show them.

The water at the end of Cedar Street. The dock that’s there now. The new houses. The house we used to live in and what they’ve done with the yard. The creek impossibly green but apparently safe. Where the surf shop used to be—on the corner of Bogue Inlet & Emerald—and now it is a Wings. The pier at the end of the street. Their son under the pier and next to the pier. And then finally, their son one quarter mile east, where they scattered the ashes of the child born before him.

I have two sisters and I’m the oldest sibling but I was not the first one born.

And I don’t know why it took me 43 years to care enough to cry.

A friend once told me that a story is a sense-making device. Through this lens it’s safe to say the trip was about making sense of my life, but perhaps the deeper truth is I was trying to crawl inside the photo at the top of this page. That’s me with my Pops, in front of Salt Creek, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1983. I wanted to find that little boy. I wanted to hold my father’s hand again. And while I thought the whole thing was about connecting with my own story, it ended up being more about connecting with the story of my parents. I needed to learn this chapter in their history. I needed to see the landmarks, stand where they stood, walk where they walked. I needed to ask questions and pay attention to the answers. And more than anything I needed to meet them in their grief.

I showed up 46 years late to my brother Jesse’s funeral, but I’m so glad I went. I did not want my Mom and Dad to be alone.

Playlist:
Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own by U2
I Like America & America Likes Me by The 1975
Brothers on a Hotel Bed by Death Cab for Cutie
Couches in Alleys by Styrofoam
Never Tear Us Apart by INXS
Persevere by Gang of Youths
Weird Goodbyes by The National featuring Bon Iver
If I Believe You by The 1975
Carolina in My Mind by James Taylor
When It Don’t Come Easy by Patty Griffin
Coney Island by Taylor Swift featuring The National
The Scientist by Coldplay