As Sandy sat on the beach with her legs up by her chest, arms wrapped around her knees, she thought. She thought about everything, from the past few days events to the past few years. She thought about her father, and how he had passed away from heart failure earlier this past year. She remembered when they used to sit on this same beach together, making sand castles all day and playing in the water. No matter what she wanted to do, however ridiculous it was, her dad would do it with her. He never seemed to run out of energy. He was so healthy then, compared to when he had died. He had looked so frail in that sickly white colored hospital bed, Iv’s sticking out of his arms and tubes going out of his nose, hooked up to endless machines that made the creepiest noises. He was never the same after that first heart attack. It made Sandy wince just thinking about it.
She tried to think about happier times, but failed miserably. Her mind kept wandering back to her present .state, and her life now that her dad, her hero, was gone. Her life fell apart after he died. Her mom wasn’t much help either. She had become seriously depressed after her dad’s death and had attempted to commit suicide numerous times. After the third failure, Sandy’s grandparents had her institutionalized. Not that it mattered much anyways, she wasn’t much company to be around in the first place.
Soon after, her sister finally moved out and started a life of her own. Which left Sandy to live with her grandparents in California. She was leaving tomorrow so she had come here, because honestly she didn’t know where else to go, she wanted quiet and this was the only place she knew that had it. She watched the sun sink down lower and lower behind the rainbow colored gas tank that had been there all of her life. She watched from the beach she spent everyday of the summer on when she was eight. In front of the swings she pushed he sister on when she was younger. In front of the softball field she’d learned some of the greatest lessons of her life on. And as she watched, she realized how much she loved this beach, this park, and this field, how many good memories she had had here. She realized the true beauty of it. How even though the water seemed murky and disgusting when swimming in it, the surface gleamed a beautiful baby blue in the late afternoon sunlight and was reflected in all the right places. How nice the sand felt underneath her feet, how pretty the giant gas tank in the distance was when the sun was shining on it. She realized that, although it seemed like everyone in her life that had always been there for her was slowly leaving, this beach, this place, and the beauty of it, had been here all along.