“Oh,” comes out in a whisper. I didn’t really mean it to, but a thread of recognition rose into my throat.

Walking on a beach is not a place you expect to get sideswiped with feeling. If anything, whatever comes up does so gradually. But as I’m picking my way through sand scattered with shells, crab bits, and kelp parts, a story appears.

Jellybean, it read, etched in a piece of driftwood on the southern Oregon coast. With a little drawing of the candy and a date in the recent past.

At first I had been a fiery ball of judgment. Why do humans feel the need to leave their mark? I ask myself, just like every time I see initials carved into a tree or painted on a rock. I mean, on an existential level I get the need. But just take a selfie and move on without harming what wild things we have left. Also, it’s a lazy way to try and be remembered. Making a legacy is harder than carving a few letters on sandstone. My grumpy old lady was front and center.

I was torn about this one though because I knew what it was. I knew what had been lost. Not too many years ago I too had known the exact size of what was growing inside my body on a daily basis. I checked dozens of websites hoping to glean information about any of this. I gave myself permission to check the size of what it would be only once a week - the whimsical food comparisons gave me a short respite from the terror that something was wrong and I didnt know it. Or everything was OK now but wouldn’t be for very long. Your baby is the size of a mango! It said. Please let me make it to a cantaloupe, I would whisper back.

Moments of excitement were not permitted to see the light of day because if so, then I would be both devastated if (when) something happened. Then ashamed for ever having been hopeful. What a moron, my few-weeks-future self would say. I accepted her opinion without question.

But luckily and unbelievably, nothing did happen. A new human arrived without more than the typical physical discomfort and mental exhaustion.

Not so for Jellybean and their caregiver for the time they had. Under whatever circumstance they did not come to be in the outside world, they were loved enough to be memorialized here on the edge of the continent. Forever looking west. Soothed by the sound of the waves and warmed by the days in the sun.

This is not a particular kind of pain I know. But I sent a little light in the direction of whatever hurting mother sat here in the recent past and gave her Jellybean a part of a goodbye.

This story is based on an experience in Harris Beach, Oregon.