An imagined conversation

    I bow down and take off my shoe and empty it of sand. I shouldn’t have worn sneakers for this. If I had planned this… Actually no, I would probably still have worn sneakers – it’s still better than high heeled sandals. I pull off the other shoe too as well as both my socks and throw them to the side. The cold, shrill ocean winds wrap around me and lift my skirt up above my knees. There’s a reason we always went to the beach dressed for a snowstorm. I let it wrap around my face for just a second, cutting teeth and bone, before subduing it with a thought. This is my imagination after all, not actually the west coast beach of Denmark.
    “Watch out for the waves.” A long-forgotten voice tells me with a smile.
    “You made it.” My face cracks up in a smile and I run back over the wet sand and throw my arms around him. The smell of pipe tobacco mixes in with the salt water like an old photograph coming alive. Perhaps that shouldn’t be possible, but this is imagined, and I can do whatever I want.
    “Like you used to.” He reads my mind and says. I don’t know if that’s what he would have said, had he really been here, but I like the thought, so I’m going with it.
    “Don’t you have something better to do than imagine conversations with old dead people?”
    “I miss you,” I tell him. I look out over the waves crashing violently against each other and making concurring crashes down on the pale beach sand. A few clouds decorate the sky, but the sun still shines down happily on us, trying to gain control of the temperature which the wind refuses to let go of. “I miss this place, the salty smell, the windy sound, I even miss the trash lying everywhere.”
    “Fond memories.” He says simply. I don’t remember how he talked anymore, I don’t know which words he used, or how he pronounced them – I don’t even know if I ever heard him speak English. I must have, at some point, possibly before I was old enough to understand it. I know he spoke it, even if most people of his generation don’t, but I can’t imagine what it would have sounded like.
    “It’s been too long.”
    “It hasn’t been long enough.” He disagrees. That’s what we always say when we lose someone, ‘We’ll meet again someday, we’ll see each other in a better place’.
    “I can’t wait till then, I don’t even know what it will be like then.”
    “It will be more real than this is.” He assures me.
    “Can’t I have this too? A conversation here and there, a distorted memory of a perfect man…”
    “I was never that.”
    “I know. Logically speaking, it wouldn’t be possible for you to have been as perfect as I remember you, you were human after all. But I like the memories.”
    “Then keep those. Remember, carry it with you, but make your own way in life.”
    “I am trying.”
    “I know. I’m proud of you.”
    “That means nothing. You’re not actually him, you’re just my imagination, and you’re just telling me what you know I want to hear.”
    “That he would be proud of what you have accomplished, what you have overcome, that he would have understood what you went through, and wouldn’t have thought you were weak or stupid for acting the way you did.”
    “Can you honestly tell me he would have been? It’s been so long now, I need photographs to remember what he looked like, I need to smell his old pipe to remember what he smelled like…”
    “But you remember what he was like. You remember the eggs at breakfast and how he would always pretend to be fooled by them, you remember ‘congo bajere’ on the front porch, you remember pirate ships in the sand made out of washed up trash, or secret hideouts in the forest, and you remember painting in his back garden. You remember him supporting you, even though you sucked at it. He supported you then, bought you whatever you needed, arranged for his sister in law to give you lessons… He loved and supported you then, why should now be any different?”
    “Because I’m not a little girl painting anymore. I’m grown up, I’m different.”
    “And you think maybe that was the upside to him dying when he did, that way you would always have the memory of him being the perfect grandfather, supporting you in your artistic endeavors, loving your anti-social side. You think his death saved you from having to see those memories replaced with a practical man who would want you to be smart, get a 9 to 5 and a steady income instead of this writer-nonsense. If you’re being honest, do you really think that’s what would have happened if he had lived?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Yeah, you do. He loved you, all of you guys, and he always wanted the best for you. He took you to your first play, he bought you the first book you remember binge reading; he would have talked Shakespeare with you, you know that.”
    “I don’t know if he read Shakespeare.”
    “Can you imagine him thinking Romeo was Hamlet’s cousin? He loved the theater and wise men who actually had something to say. Didn’t he quote Søren Kirkegård to you? You two would have had a blast – you could probably have talked him into going to see Hamlet with you in 2015. That was always what he liked about you, you remember, that you would rather watch a play than play Vikings with the other children.”
    “I’m not like everyone else, he would have been proud. Thank you.”
    “This whole thing is basically you talking to yourself, you know that, right? You’re just thanking yourself now…”
    “Shut up.”
    “Erh, again, talking to yourself.”
    “Just accept the thanks and shut up.”
    “I take it back. You can’t even take a compliment from yourself, grandpa would have been ashamed.”
    “Is it self-harm if I Gibbs-slap you right now?”