My grandpa's first love was a girl with sparkling blue eyes and fluttery chocolate lashes. He said she sang like an angel and danced like a fairy, and they were young but God they loved each other.
The one thing that stuck with me about the stories he would tell of her was that she loved the ocean. My grandpa said she would say she loved the way the light could pour over her soul and simply wash the troubles away, and she loved the waves that never rested, always lapping at the shore even though they knew they would always be pushed back. She said the person she thought of while standing in front of the ocean was love itself, even the sand beneath your toes let itself be ground into little pieces just so it could filter between her fingers.
My grandpa died a few years after his last story of her. He talked about her a lot towards the end. I'd like to think they're together now, at some ocean in the heavens, running across a beach, their bones no longer brittle and frail.
