06/03/2026
The kindness of strangers.
June is proving to be a little challenging, pride month, without the person I celebrate in honor of.
I have shared a little bit about my grief here, mostly to my stories. Some mornings, I go down to sit at the seawall⊠where my cousin used to frequent.
I listen to the one voicemail I have saved from him, just to hear his voice.. and sometimes sit and listen to a song that reminds me of him. The last couple times, Iâve gone to beachcomb. Something we did all the time as kids at our beach house.
Specifically.. for âwish rocksâ.
Itâs normally empty here, especially early in the season, except for some random passerbyâs. This morning though, a man showed up at the exact same time, to do the exact same thing. I thought it unlikely we were searching for the same treasures, but the people pleaser in me stuck to one side of the beach and waited for him to pass through before searching the other. I was nervous he would ask me what I was searching for, because my eyes were already misty behind my sunglasses. Instead, he stopped me when we crossed paths, just to comment on how much he likes my minivanđ
Before he left he handed me an urchin shell, commented on how rare it is to find one that size and whole, he left it with me and went on his way. I cried.
He doesnât know how much his kindness in that moment meant to me.
Because I wish this world could ALWAYS be so kind.
Because I wish more people would share their kindness with a stranger.
Because I wish my cousin could still be here to collect these perfect stones, the ones with the white band all the way around, to wish upon and throw as hard as we could into the ocean.
I wish, I wish, I wish.
I like to see signs of my cousin everywhere. I think the first one was the gift from a stranger, I think the second one was the perfect heart shaped rock I stumbled upon, while not looking for it. And I think the third sign is this song instagram suggested for me. Which in name and theme is similar to the song I chose for his funeral slideshow, Follow The Sun by Xavier Rudd, but without the difficult associated memories. I think he would have preferred this one anyway.
