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You won’t see it on The Travel Channel’s Most Haunted Places and
you won’t see ads for a Ghost Walk through
Pensacola or
Panama City, but the
Gulf
Coast is haunted all the same….my son’s voice
echoes down the beach; his laughter reverberates over the sound of the waves
and the cry of the sea gulls. I see him as a toddler, with his superman shirt
on backward, running through the sand, his blonde hair tousled. And he is
laughing, always laughing. I see him running to the packed sand where the water
has lapped the night before and receded, leaving a ledge that he would stand on
and the sand would collapse under his feet - and he would laugh.
I see him wading out into the ocean when he was eight or nine and
karate chopping the waves as intently as he had seen the Karate Kid do it. I
remember him feeding the sea gulls and the gulls following him, hovering over
him as he walked down the beach. It was the same year that his own taste in
clothing had come into play and I wasn’t sure if the gulls were looking for
food or just amazed at what he was wearing….
There is comfort that I see him at every age, that he seems to
be there with me, but there is guilt and pain that he physically isn’t.
I remember him at eleven or twelve singing in a high pitched
voice, “Take me down to the
Panama City where the grass is green and the girls
are pretty-” and laughing that he had improvised Guns ’n
Roses
Paradise
City.
I see him on the go carts, on the deep sea fishing boats as they
pull away, I see him swimming with his face sunburned, rubbing his eyes as the
salt water burns them and I see him on the putt putt course. I see him on a boogie board and at every
Pizza Hut on the beach.
Yes, the
Gulf
Coast is haunted.
I see him searching for sand dollars and shells with a net and
chasing sand crabs with a flashlight. I see him at seventeen, proudly carrying
his twin nieces down to the ocean, their first time to see it and he watched their
amazement at the big, big water with
a smile, showing teeth made straight by braces.
Many people don’t know it, but the
Gulf
Coast is haunted.
Before I lost a child, there were many things I didn’t realize,
couldn’t have realized – one is that you seem to lose that child at every age
they ever were. While I am so very, very
thankful for the memories, I hate the re-enforcement that comes uninvited – that precious child that ran up and down the
beach in the superman shirt is gone from you. You can’t go to him and say,
“Remember when you were two and insisted on wearing that Superman shirt backward
all over
Florida? Remember when you played Karate Kid in
the waves?”
You know, as a parent I probably shouldn’t have let him wear the
shirt backward, I should have insisted that he wear it right, but it is one of
my fondest memories and I’m glad I let him have his way. I let him stay up past
his bedtime a lot and maybe I shouldn’t have, but I look on it now as stolen
hours, hours I got to spend with him instead of sleeping them away.
The sobering scene at the beach is when I see a young father show
his child how the sand collapses under your weight when the tide has receded or
how to chase a sand crab down with a flashlight. The child giggles and looks up
at his dad and I am so saddened that Stephen will never be a father, never be
able to share with his kids what he loved so much as a child. I see another
young father putting his little boy into a go cart for the first time and I
smile at their happiness, but wipe a tear.
I guess with vacations you have more time to think and that can
bring a special kind of pain. Some vacations are more rushed with planes to
catch and itineraries – but – on the Gulf, where we can travel by car - no rush
- and things are laid back once you get there, there are ghosts walking the
beach.
In memory of Stephen Beam
July 17, 1978 – April 13, 1997
Written by his mom, Marcia Carter
Author of
Stephen’s Moon, Spring 2005
Marietta,
Georgia
TCF Chapter
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