Beloved
Musings and Memory at Point Loma Lighthouse
To start at their resting place.
To begin at a place that came after the end: where the frayed, loose ends of lives, cut short by the blunt blade of war, are laid to rest. Remembered red thread tied off neatly into bouquets of flowers, left for boxes of bodies marked by stones of
names,
dates,
and a distilled relevance
of these people who once were.
To be honest, we stopped here only on our way to Cabrillo, only because Phillis was looking out the car window —- and instead of seeing the grassy cemetery or the clear day or the blue of the water just beyond reach, she saw a picture worth holding onto.
After we park and don’t jump the wall, I break away from the group rather quickly, stopping to read markers explaining the history of this site, skim instructions regarding leaving flowers, and to walk among the graves. I’ve always felt a little strange about picking my way between rows of tombstones, stepping on the caskets of the deceased with merely some feet of dirt between us — but my curiosity gets the better of me. I end up along a row of names of exclusively women. Fascinated, I peek around to find that the tombstones are double-sided: the wives on the side facing me, and their husbands on the back. I smile to myself a little — a touch of sweetness, from whoever had to design a place so somber.
Later, bending down to lean a tipped over green vase of droopy-headed hydrangeas against an ashy wall of even more names, I watch as the years inch closer to the present. Peering back at the hills of tombstones, I have to wonder —- who remembers? One to two generations later, the people you left behind reminisce. Three generations later, perhaps your name is kept in an attic trunk, weathered down to respectful obligation, cared for second-hand in fondly mused upon memory. Any further, and we are likely all that is left on our tombstones:
“Audrey Sioeng.
May 15, 2004 - Present.
Beloved.”
Finally at the edge of the cemetery, staring into the blue and the bustle of San Diego, I wonder: as our dead pile up, when do we run out of land to bury them?
–
Half an hour later, I am still sifting through the water with my eyes — for answers, but also for whales. The two older women next to me deftly unwrap white paper and munch on their sandwiches, also musing about the whales. We find boats instead.
“Boats aren’t supposed to pester them,” one of them comments. The implication, of course, being that they do.
As Shawna identifies the native flora on the patchwork green hill just before us, I stare hard at the road to the tidepools in an attempt to detect any twinge of familiarity. My mother took my family to Cabrillo National Park nearly every year when I was a kid. The hazy remnants of those days are what prompted me to come back, and yet now here, I am forced to recognize I remember next to nothing: not the expanse of blue, punctuated but not interrupted by boats and birds; not the small islands in the distance, shrouded in fog; not even the lighthouse, the beacon whose name beckons the tourists to this shore. Just the name etched on a stone at the entrance of the national park, and a warm association that makes more sense in my chest than my head.
–
When we finally make our way to the Point Loma Lighthouse, Phillis has me pose in the doorway; I have her pose in the curve of the spiral stairwell. Meanwhile, the families cycling in and out of the lighthouse debate its practicality as an Airbnb. Kids scamper up and down the stairs.
“I don't think I could’ve been a lighthouse operator”, a woman says while observing the size of the staged, glassed off rooms;
— “keeper”, her husband corrects;
and “Look, calamari from the kitchen!”, an elementary schooler announces from the living room display;
and “So cool to see how they lived”, verbally reviewed as they exit the building.
At the heart of the lighthouse is a shale blue spiral staircase, just wide enough for one person. This conversation and laughter travels up and down it, giving breath to a precious, casual camaraderie as we negotiate ascending and descending and how to divvy up the finite standing space on each of the lighthouse’s three floors.
In the building next door, there are broken demos and words on the walls describing how this lighthouse used a Fresnel lense, how it used to run on sperm whale oil fuel, and how it was built to guide gold rush hopefuls up the coast to San Francisco (and sadly, was not very efficacious).
But as I browse throughout it all, I cannot help but wonder, perhaps carelessly — why? Why have we worked so hard to preserve a lighthouse that only functioned, only served us, for thirty six years? What makes this helpful, what makes this relevant, what makes this sliver of history — less than a single lifetime — consequential?
–
Months later, I FaceTime my little sister back home and she tells me how she was the only grandchild who celebrated QingMing this year — a Chinese Easter, to keep the graves of our ancestors, commemorate and pray to our dead, burning paper houses and incense next to their favorite foods and things in life so that they might enjoy them up in heaven. My mouth falls open in shock, sadness, and a bit of horror as I sit on the floor of my apartment in Berkeley, six hours away from where I now feel I should have been. I ask after my brother, and the cousins that should’ve also been at Rose Hills.
My sister shrugs. Other things were more important.
Even as I cannot understand it logically, I think there is something holy about the past. There is something important about memorial, something about it that makes it integral to thanksgiving and impenetrable, present joy.
—
Earlier, back at the veteran cemetery —
ATTENTION:
PLEASE
STAY OFF
THE WALL
wall contains
cremated remains
I laugh in shock, and send a photo of it to both my sister and my boyfriend. Their indignance mirrors my own, and despite agreeing, I laugh at how they trip over this absurd existence.
—
As I graduate, I have struggled to realize that the present cannot be all somber. To live each moment like its our last does not mean to mourn —
it is to pick tangerines off the Airbnb’s tree and peel them until the whole kitchen reeks of citrus;
it is to sleep two hours and wake up at sunrise to dawn’s pink fingertips and a blushing Pacific Ocean;
it is to let skin warm in the sun whilst watching crabs munch on seaweed for an inordinate amount of time;
it is to run into the ocean just after sunset, and devour Taco El Gordo’s Campechana fries after;
it is to walk on the sand and let the tide soften our footsteps,
our proof of weight,
into
nothing;
it is to live,
try to hold falling sand,
and fail.
To shove receipts in your pockets and learn to make your peace with what is lost in translation.
I don’t believe we were meant to be wholly vessels, of forever or otherwise. (Holy, perhaps. Hole-y… yes.) The world is so much more interesting in motion.
~
5:57PM
“i don’t know whether to swim or not”
“aka get hit by waves”
6:03PM
“i should do things you would want to be here for? idk”
6:06PM
“compromise is knees high lol”
6:35PM
“the ocean had other ideas”
When I choose to turn in for the night instead of playing our rounds of hot seat (which is another proof of seniority, and age, if anyone needed one), I find that Caravan takes new air into its lungs even as it exhales me to whatever comes next.
As I leave the AirBNB at 4AM for the airport, I tiptoe around in the dark, trying to remember this end. The care of each footfall, the rise and fall of their sleeping forms, the grit on the hardwood we brought home from the beach. In another time, I am a freshman in some other nook of San Diego on my first Caravan trip, stepping around air mattresses at dawn.
Everytime I open my tightly bound fists, I find moons.
So what we do hold onto — what we do pass on; yes, this is important, too.