Evanescence

His name was Lucas Knightdale and I remember thinking to myself that he was sort of beautiful. It was a fleeting thought; one that passed through my mind as I ran my toes through the dry, shell-encrusted sand. He didn’t look like he belonged; his body was somewhat paler than everyone else’s, and his knees were pulled up against his chest, a pair of sunglasses covering blue eyes which were cast out across the ocean.

I was at the beach by myself; my father wasn’t one to allow me to venture places on my own often, and so the news of his trip to London had prompted my abrupt escape from the confines of my vastly overpriced house. And I think that it was that thought – the thought that maybe we were both alone, and that maybe we were both looking out at the ocean and expecting something a little more than just water that had be walking over to him and sitting down beside him. His hair was dark and from beside him I could see the scripted tattoo that adorned his lower arm, which was propped to the side and covered only by the grains of sand that kept him upright.

He looked at me then and took off his sunglasses, and his eyes were blue; so blue that I wondered why I’d spent all my time simply looking out at the water instead. We looked at each other for a while before I rolled onto my back, neither of us saying a word. I think I somehow knew that he was a little lost and I think he must have realised that I was too, because it was silent for a few moments before I turned onto my side, looking at this stranger through my sunglasses and wondering if I maybe knew him. “What does your tattoo say?” I asked softly, the corners of my lips curling into a half smile.

He turned to look at me, his glasses lowered again, and I could see my reflection in the lenses. “Evanescence,” he replied lowly, before glancing out at the ocean again. “It means gradually fading.”

And maybe it was the fact that my father wouldn’t have wanted it, or maybe it was the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking that life was gradually fading too, but I leaned over and I kissed him then and for some reason he kissed me back. And I could feel the sand in my toes like the whisper of something real and I could feel him against my lips and for me, the moment was anything but evanescent.



We married six years later on the same beach that we’d first met at. My father didn’t bother to show up; he didn’t agree with the fact that I was marrying a wanderer; a man with no real family or reason to belong; a man who travelled across the world looking for something that he couldn’t seem to find. And as we said our vows, I liked to think that maybe he’d found something in me.

I don’t think I could’ve loved anyone more than I loved him, standing there with my feet in the sand and the soft caress of the ocean wind brushing against my bare skin. He was smiling and holding my hands as though my hands were what he’d been looking for, and when he pushed the wedding ring up my finger I realised that he’d given me everything he had.

When the ceremony had died down and we were simply sitting on the beach, his arm around my waist and my head against his shoulder, he told me that he’d finally found it. I ran my fingers along his tattoo, and I looked up and him and pressed my lips against his and thought to myself: this will last forever.



Our first child arrived four and a half years later; a little girl that we named Louise Mae. She was tiny and pink and as I held her in my arms Lucas started to cry, reaching out and brushing his thumb across her forehead. Her eyes were barely open but she reached out to touch him, her hand absently pressing against his chest as she began to let out soft cries.

He looked at me then – looked at us, at our family and what had become of two strangers on a beach. Tears were falling down his cheeks and he reached out to hold my hand, squeezing my fingers so tightly that I felt myself beginning to tear up as well. “I will never, ever, love anyone as much as I love you,” he whispered to her, running his thumb across her cheek. “My Louise.” He reached down to kiss her on her forehead, and I think it was then that I really started to cry.

“Lucas,” I said hoarsely, and he looked down at me tenderly.

“I’ll never forget this moment,” he whispered. “This one will last forever.”



We weren’t able to conceive again after Louise. It caused us a lot of heartache and put a strain on our relationship, but eventually we decided that we’d simply give all our love to each other and Louise.

“Maybe we didn’t have enough love,” he had said to me one morning. “Maybe there wasn’t enough to spare.” And I sat down beside him and placed my hand over his, and thought to myself that maybe he was right. My heart had already been split into three pieces and there was nothing left to give away. I’d found the loves of my lives. I’d found them in a man with eyes the colour of the ocean and a little girl with tuffs of blonde hair like mine.

And maybe that was enough, because when I saw her coming down the stairs with her oversized schoolbag on her back and her green chequered dress down past her thin knees, my heart certainly felt as full as it could get.



When Louise turned twenty-four she met a boy named Adam, whom she had run into at a university meet-and-great and immediately taken a liking to. By then she had grown into a beautiful woman, with hair just a slightly darker blonde than mine and eyes the colour of the ocean like her father. She was training to become a nurse and he was training to become a doctor, and though Lucas was overly protective about letting her go he eventually accepted that his baby girl had become a beautiful woman.

On the night before her wedding I took her down to the beach where Lucas and I first met, and we sat down on the sand and looked out at the sea. I held her hand and she leaned her head against my shoulder and I thought about how life was fading again, how my life with her had faded. But she was making new connections, she was breaking away from my evanescence and that was okay. Because she had a third of my heart and I knew that she would keep that inside of her wherever she went.

“Do you remember when we took you down here as a child?” I had asked softly, running my toes through the sand. She looked at me and smiled, and I saw in her smile my husband so clearly that I almost started to cry. “We’d take you down to the water’s edge and you’d-“

“Feed the waves with sand,” she finished, squeezing my hand. “Of course I remember, mum.”

Eventually it started getting too dark and she went back inside to check that everything was ready for the next day, when my baby girl would walk down the aisle and marry the man she had grown to love. All I knew was that I was thankful that she had her father there to walk down there with her, because it was an awful big distance when you had to do it alone.

Minutes seemed to pass as I sat and watched the waves, wondering how life had managed to slip past me without me noticing. And as each roll of water hit the shore and swept back with it more sand, I thought of my life and how much I’d lost. How much had been captured and swept away. And I was happy… God, I was happy, but I was also grieving for all that had disappeared.

He must have walked outside without me knowing, because he was beside me on the sand, and his hand was brushing against my knee and he was looking at me with those ocean eyes. I wandered if he could still see past the lines in my face, past the etches that life had left on my features, and if he could still see in me that stranger that sat beside him in the sand and kissed him like the world was ending.

He grabbed my hand and I turned to look at him, and he smiled – just the whisper of a secret across his lips, so deep and beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes. “Look how far we’ve come,” he said softly, curling his toes in the sand and looking at me tenderly.

I smiled, running my thumb across the back of his hand. “Who would’ve thought.”

We sat in silence for a few moments, because it seemed as though silence had become a friend, before he leaned over and he kissed me. And in that second I thought to myself that if my daughter looked out the window, I’d rather her see the greying man and the aging woman, because we felt rather perfect to me.



Months after Lucas turned sixty-four, I began to notice changes in him. Louise had since moved out and had two children of her own; boys named Jacob and Mark, who thankfully had my husband’s eyes also.

After a few weeks of noticing the changes I brought my husband to a doctor, and we got the news that changed our lives.

“You’re going through the beginning stages of dementia,” the doctor had said quietly, giving us a solemn smile. “You should expect your memory to deteriorate as time goes on. There’s nothing that can be done to stop this. I’m sorry.”

He was holding my hand when we got the news. The car ride on the way home was tense and saddened, and when I reached out to grab his hand he pulled away. He wouldn’t look me in the eyes; wouldn’t touch me and wouldn’t say my name. I started crying and he stopped the car, pulling over to the side of the road and killing the engine. He grabbed my face and for the first time since we’d found out we couldn’t conceive again I saw tears in his eyes, and when he kissed me it was almost with a promise of goodbye.

“Don’t do that,” I whispered. “You’re still here. I will love you even if you don’t know who I am.”

He pulled away, burying his head in his hands as he started to really cry. “I don’t want to be here,” he said quietly, his voice muffled by his hands. “I can’t stand to forget you. I can’t stand to look you in the eyes and not know when I’ll wake up and no longer be able to recognise them.”

I grabbed his hand them, trying to be strong for him even though I was falling apart inside. “We’ll see what happens. It won’t happen for a while now.”

He looked at me then, the eyes that I’d fallen in love with forlorn in a way that I’d never seen. “I’d rather die than forget you.” He started sobbing then, his body shaking, and I began to realise that as hard as this was for me, it was harder for him. How hard it would be to sit there and hear that everything you’d worked for and everything you’d fallen in love with would disappear eventually and there was nothing you could do.

“Let me die,” he cried. “God, I’d rather die.”



Louise was sitting at our kitchen table, an image of the little girl on her first day of school. She was crying too, squeezing her hands together and looking at her father as though her world was falling apart.

Lucas had stopped crying by now, and was looking at the wall with his eyebrows furrowed and his face tense. I knew that he felt like it was his fault, and so I grabbed his hand and when he turned to look at me I smiled with all my might.

Louise let out a muffled cry and Lucas pulled away, walking over to her and kneeling and grabbing her hand. “When you were a baby,” he said softly, “and I first saw you, I immediately fell in love.” He smiled at her, brushing his thumb over the back of her hand soothingly. “And you know what you did?” She shook her head wordlessly, tears still in her eyes as she looked at her father. He smiled, his eyes watery as he squeezed her hand. “You reached out with your hand and you brushed it against my chest, and I knew in that second that that piece of my heart would always be yours.”

He was crying by then as he reached out and placed their hands against his chest, over his heart. “You’ve got to remember… I will always love you. That piece of my heart… that’s yours. And so even when up here,” he said fiercely, pointing at his head with a shaking finger, “forgets the fact that I love you, you will always have my heart.”



Some mornings he’d get up and kiss me, and I’d think to myself… is this the last? Is this the last time he’ll remember those nights on the beach and remember falling in love with me and remember my love for him. It was hard wondering whether every word he said to me would be the last one he said with that look in his eyes – my ocean eyes; the last time he’d look at me with love.

Some mornings I’d go to greet him and he’d turn away and walk into the study and sit down, and when I walked in there to serve him lunch he’d be staring at the wall. And when he turned to look at me there would be nothing there, and I’d smile at him and tell him my name but when I left there would be tears in my eyes.

Some days he’d yell at me and walk away. He would sit on the couch and stare at the TV and when I walked over and sat with him he would talk about nothing, and I’d nod and I’d smile as though we were strangers again. And each time it would make me miserable I thought about what he’d said to Louise on that day, and I’d remember that a piece of my heart was inside him and that maybe that was enough. I knew who he was, I knew who I’d fallen in love with and that was all I needed.

We stopped sleeping in the same bed. He wouldn’t let me lie next to him – he would let out strangled sounds until I left the bed and shut the door.

One night when I’d automatically set myself up in Louise’s old room I heard the door open and I looked up to see his face, and I knew that he was there, my Lucas was there and I started to cry. He wasn’t all there – he didn’t remember me really, but the love was there and he crawled into bed beside me and fell to sleep holding my hand. And I somehow knew that that was it. The last time that we’d fall to sleep together, the last time I’d see that he loved me. I knew in the morning I’d be gone and whether I’d come back would be hard to tell. But I loved him in that second and I knew I would lie with him until the end.

Five months later his heart started to shut down and he could barely leave the bed. I knew what it was, knew that it was time and that I was beginning to lose my Lucas, the stranger in the sand and the love of my life. And on one winter’s morning he was lying in bed with his eyes shut and his breathing slow and I knew it was about to be over.

I crawled into bed beside him and reached out to grab his hand, but he let out a groan and dragged it away. There were tears in my eyes as I listened to his breathing, wanting to feel his heartbeat so I could feel it all drain away.

And as I laid there I started thinking about everything. Thinking about that day on the beach and that kiss and how it led to a promise of forever, and how forever was dwindling away with his heartbeat. I thought of watching the waves and holding his hand; I thought of the tears in his eyes as I gave birth to his daughter. I thought of that day in the beach, the day before Louise’s wedding, and he’d said to me: look how far we’ve come. And god, we had. And we would continue walking; the ghost of him and me, holding hands as we walked through life. I would never forget him. He had forgotten me years ago but he would be on my mind until the last breath left my body.

When I knew it was over, I grabbed his hand, letting out a cry and beginning to shake. And in my head I imagined him holding me, the way he always had, and I hoped that wherever he was he could see me again. My Lucas. My ocean and the love of my life. And even though I hadn’t gotten to see his eyes, I knew I’d see them every day in the eyes of our daughter and our grandchildren. And I was thankful for that. Thankful that I’d remember what they looked like. Thankful that they got to live on.

I squeezed his hand and imagined we were stranger again on the beach, and that I wasn’t an old woman and his heart was still beating. And he didn’t know my name but that was okay because I didn’t know his, and in a second I’d roll over and kiss him and there would be forever waiting for us when it was over. And he was dead and gone but I loved him and I knew that my wanderer had loved me. I knew that a piece of his heart was still beating inside of me.

I ran my fingers over his tattoo and remembered when I’d first done it. And I thought how this had all faded, and his heart had faded and his life had faded. But it was wrong. Our life and our love was not evanescent in the slightest – it would last forever.

And lying there, I could still feel the sand in my toes.