I was ten years old the first time I saw a dead person up close. It wasn’t at a funeral, where most people see their first body, because I had not yet been to one. It wasn’t at the scene of a horrible highway accident, for I usually looked away when we came upon one. Car crashes happened with some frequency on the two-lane roads of the 60’s, and I do remember seeing a body lying half in and half out of a car once, but only from a distance. Mom managed to shield my eyes before we got close enough to see blood. No, when I first met death up close it was on a beach. Continue reading “A Death at the Beach”