Road Notes

It was almost midday when I turned onto a one-lane road and followed the gentle hills around twists and turns until I came to the sea. The English Channel stretched before me, the sky above was deep blue. Mine was the only car in sight. I slowed to a crawl, rolled down the window, and took a deep breath of sea air while the birds sang somewhere above the dunes.

It was last Monday and I had arrived in France from London the morning before, leaving wet and gray behind. Spring has arrived here in Normandy and I needed the boost. The Blue Car was behind schedule and not arriving in Le Havre and ready for pickup for another week. I was in my rental car (a serviceable Renault) and the hint of head cold I felt when I left London was now raging. I was traveling, yes. But I wasn’t fully “moving” yet. And here I was, at the sea.

Omaha Beach. A place weighted with history.

I have wanted to make this visit to the World War II D-Day Beaches of Normandy for many years. Maybe decades. And I have felt the need grow more pressing as I watch remembrance ceremonies each year and see the dwindling line of veterans, in their wheelchairs and with walking sticks, accompanied by family and caregivers. How many are still alive? For the Americans alone, it is estimated that less than one half a percent of the 16.4 million veterans who served are still living this year.  

A week ago, that first sight of Omaha Beach was disappointing. From where I stood there wasn’t much to see. Just a tiny sign, a parking lot for maybe 15 cars, and worst of all, a resort and hotel at the dunes -- a low-slung complex that mostly blended in the landscape. But still, I felt the outrage. A resort?

I have learned that expectations can be dangerous things—carefully built hopes and fantasies that often collapse when confronted with the reality of the moment. Fighting my let down and my sense of being unmoored on this trip, I got out of the car (the only one in the lot) and took my second deep breath of the morning as I started walking--through the parking lot, and the turnaround in front of the closed-for-the-season snack bar, and past the comfort station to the pathway on the dunes. Below, I saw an older couple walking their dog on the beach. Farther along, someone was running, their feet teasingly close to the water’s edge. It was a normal Monday for the local residents. The birds were singing and the weather was as perfect as could be for the second day of March.

As I made my way down to the beach, I tried to imagine the scene there almost 82 years ago. The fear, the confusion, the noise, the bodies. I tried to envision a landscape filled with rifles stuck vertically in the ground, battle helmets twisting on top in the wind, marking the temporary burial place of the thousands of soldiers who died during those days of June. And as I imagined the scene, the seagulls filled the air with their screeches and the dog barked happily with his ball.

Life goes on.

The towns I passed through that morning -- Port-en-Bessin, Colleville Sur Mer -- were small, the houses old. Repairs to wartime damage have been made and new infill constructed where bombs landed. And it came to me, as I climbed up from the beach to the memorial set high on the dune, that this is exactly as it should be.

My disappointment curled at the edges and dried, leaving behind a new understanding.

History lives in ordinary places.

Life goes on. 

I continued on the short distance to the American Cemetery. As I walked between the sections of grave markers, my thoughts turned inward. Cemeteries have a way of doing that. I thought of the losses in my life. My father. My husband. A dear friend to 9/11. Another to cancer. Still another to a sudden illness.

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As I looked at the wide expanse of graves before me, a phrase came to mind.

May their memory be a blessing.

All the soldiers. All the people I have lost.

In Judaism, this is what we say to someone who has lost a loved one, a family member, a friend. I have always understood this phrase as comfort for the bereaved—a reminder that we were blessed to know and love the person who is gone. Those loving memories bring us solace and peace.

But I will admit that I haven’t given much further thought to this phrase of comfort before Monday. Maybe it was feeling a little off balance by my cold and the missing Blue Car. It was certainly something to do with the site. With history. With the weight of it all. And with this moment in time.  

It occurred to me that a blessing can mean many things beyond comfort.

Memory can guide us. What would they have done? What example did their lives set?

It can remind us of responsibility. Unfinished work, values worth carrying forward.

And it can be a kind of motivation: a reminder to seize the moments of joy we have and not let them pass by because we are too busy, too distracted, too worried, or too sad.

What did that person inspire? What laughter did they bring to our lives?

I do know that memories cannot be blessings if they prevent us from moving forward. If they swathe us in regrets.

On Monday morning I stood above the beach and watched the tide move in and out as it has for centuries. Behind me were rows of grave markers stretching toward the horizon. Ahead of me was the open sea.

Memory behind. Movement ahead.

Standing above Omaha Beach, watching the wind move through the grass on the dunes and the seagulls swoop down to the waves, I realized that memory works the way this landscape does. It holds the past without freezing time.

The towns along these beaches were rebuilt after the war. Children were born. Dogs chase balls along the surf. Spring arrives each year.

Perhaps this is what it means for memory to be a blessing—not something we cling to in sorrow, that holds us still. But something that reminds us to keep walking in hope, guiding us forward.

Susan 

Road Trip Miles: 636 (and reuniting with the Blue Car tomorrow)

From the Blue Car Europe Series