Seashells tell a story.

In death, every mollusk leaves behind it’s exoskeleton (“Seashell”, Encyclopedia Britannica).

The only shell it has ever worn, that has grown with it throughout its days, lies on the beach (Edgar, 2022).

It’s a jacket.

It’s armor.

It’s a mobile home (Ibid.).

But it’s also a built-in headstone, a grave marker carried over a lifetime.

The shells are beautiful and unique, a mix of colors and patterns, shapes and sizes that make them as distinct as a fingerprint (Sawyer, 2020) and may help them to camouflage with their surroundings (De Deckker et al., 2017)

They have rough ridges that add strength and ward off predators (Strugnell and Silva, 2022).

They have jagged edges, because even a tough shell will meet tough times.

But the very fact the shell persists after death, proclaims their victory over adversity. The shell survived the trip.

And in that they are surprisingly human.

There is unquenchable beauty in us, even at our frailest. Even at the end of the journey. Even in death. There is inherent dignity to our lives. No matter how painful. No matter how many times we stumbled.

There is glory in our uniqueness.

Our colors and marks display our design and experiences, the gifts we’ve been given and the stripes we have earned, the scars we bear from the wounds we have survived.

Our rough ridges show the strength we have developed.

Our jagged edges mark the battles we have fought.

Our endurance shows the obstacles we have overcome.

And this is an offering to those of us left to remember.

When we look back on the lives of people we have lost, we often have the impulse to sanitize the story.

We erase the marks.

We blend the colors

We smooth the rough ridges.

We remove the jagged edges.

We soften them, in a thousand little ways to tell a cleaner story

Our desire to honor their lives, and our own, can lead us to create a version of them that isn’t quite them, to imagine a version of us that isn’t quite us.

This, however, neither honors them or us.

Their stripes were real.

They were earned.

These were the forces that forged them, for better and for worse.

These were the edges that molded us, for better and for worse.

And grieving properly requires us to remember accurately and speak truthfully.

Seeing with the eyes of grace does not mean lying.

What if we told the story with every crack, ridge, and blemish?

What if we claimed our histories, so that we could preserve them, celebrate them, pass judgment on them, and allow ourselves to heal?

What if we practiced a radical forgiveness, that allowed our loved ones to be just as human as they actually were?

What if we acknowledged that we are human too? Instead of trying to smooth our history out so that it looks like everyone elses?

The seashell tells a true story.

May we always do the same.

(Photo Credit: Anthony, Inspiredimages)

Works Cited

Edgar, Jim. “15 Amazing Seashell Facts Everyone Should Know " Sand Dollar Shelling.” Sand Dollar Shelling, 18 Aug. 2022, https://sanddollarshelling.com....

Sawyer, Abigail. “No Two Shells Are the Same.” BioTechniques, 20 June 2020, https://www.biotechniques.com/....

“Seashell.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/sci....

“She Sells Sea Shells...” Patrick De Deckker et al., Curious, 7 Nov. 2017, https://www.science.org.au/cur....

Strugnell, Jan, and Catarina Silva. “Curious Kids: Why Are Some Shells Smooth and Some Shells Corrugated?” The Conversation, 29 Aug. 2022, https://theconversation.com/cu....