AN EXCERPT…

From Walks on the Beach with Angie: A Father’s Story of Love
by Don Warner with Marly Cornell

As I stepped out on the sand that first night, the only lights that shone on the beach were from the Surf and Sand and the homes along the coast. I walked in the darkness alone, remembering so many of those conversations with my daughter through the years. We spoke of how we appreciated the beauty of this place and the enormity, depth of mystery and vastness of the sea. No matter how long our own lives, they were only short stories in the history of the world. When Angela was small, I think those were my messages to her about my mortality relative to hers; but without saying so, the roles reversed to some extent in later years.

Our nighttime walks were the times Angie and I shared our thoughts about the universe and eternity and how the endless waves had washed ashore for billions of years, that the stars we saw were really as they were millions of years ago because the light took that long to travel so far to reach Earth. Together, Angie and I were awed by the starry heavens above us.

But now as I walked along that same beach in the quiet darkness and looked up at the endless number of stars in the sky, I realized that Angie now had the answers, and I was still left with the questions. I cried again and again, for I should have been the one leading the way for Angela in finding the real answers to many of our questions about life, the universe, death and eternity. Linda always identified one star in a sky as Angela’s, but the entire sky was Angela’s now. She was already in the inconceivable and unimaginable place, so why not trust that she could now comprehend these mysteries?

For her, most of all, but also for Linda and me, I wished that Angela had had the opportunity to live a long life on this Earth. I wished she could have experienced all life’s pleasures and joys before leaving forever. In my tears were sadness and anger at the unfairness of fighting cystic fibrosis all those years, the degrading experiences during the days leading to surgery, and the eighty days in intensive care, leading to the decision that letting her go was a form of a gift from us to her. Was our choice a gift? Only the answers to the questions Angie and I talked about on our nightly walks on the beach could provide a respite to my tears.