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It began with the sea and someday it will end with the sea.
Water, believe it or not, remembers everything. Walls are constantly witness to things happening inside the home and its families, but the water is just as privy to humanity and its ways. And what better witness to humans than the ocean?
Broadchurch is known or its far-reaching cliffs that seem to kiss the sky and its peaceful beautiful shoreline. The sea moans and frets along the sand, mournful and mysterious, and it remembers.
A boy’s body, sprawled in the sand deep at night. Its waters were disturbed by a boat’s rudder as his killer ran away.
It recalls snippets of the following morning, of a plea to God and a mother’s heart-wrenching cry. Its ancient waters have taken the lives of numberless victims over numberless years; it knows pain. It recognizes loss. The mother has strength in her limbs—as all humans brought up living beside the sea had to have—but she could not have withstood its constant assault.
They drag her away but she comes back. Back, and in the company of a woman with the hardy strength of the laurel. The sea welcomes them both, but its waves are ignored.
No matter. The ocean knows its time is forever.
It can remember drowning an old man driven to despair, clutching a photo of a woman and child in his hands as life left his limbs. The ocean cradles him gently and in the morning it lets him rest in the sand rather than dragging him out to the deep so that he can be found by his friends. It feels the woman’s sadness as she looks down at the old man’s body. It tastes her companion’s regret.
Time is meaningless to the sea. Months pass. People tread and swim in its waters and move on with their lives. It tickles the bottoms of the boats they’ve built to glide along its surface and waits for the winter galls to come. It’s almost time to bombard the land again and show the inevitable power and dominance of the sea.
It is beside the sea that Broadchurch’s residents come to pay their respects to the murdered boy after his killer is found. The fire crackles and burns bright and hot; the ocean knows that with just one mighty wave it can extinguish the fleeting light but cannot find in itself the will to do so.
No. Let the humans be. They will remember their loss in the light and the heat of these fires. Let them have this hope for now.
The fires burn down eventually. Smoke rises like ghosts in the night as the people of Broadchurch slowly head back to their homes. The sea moans its goodbye to them and crashes along the sand as its comfort, a haunting gaping sound that wounds as well as heals.
The sea remembers every loss. It remembers every death.
The sea is the watcher. It will always be here. It will be the comforter at night. It will be the witness to humanity’s actions.
It will be here long after humanity is gone.
It began, after all, with the sea.
And someday it will end with the sea.