It’s amazing how many material possessions a person can accumalate over the span of a life time. I looked around my house taking inventory of my mother’s things, noticing how everything reflected her money and status. There was so much stuff I didn’t know what to do with it all. I could probably feed a small island nation with the money she spent on one of her gala dresses. When I wasn’t packing things up, I spent the days talking to what seemed like a million lawyers. Everyone wanted a piece of her life, everyone but me. It could all go down in flames, and I wouldn’t shed a tear.

    After a few weeks, most of the house was cleared. My many stepfathers fought over most of the material assets and whatever they didn’t want I auctioned off and donated the proceeds to charity. The only thing I kept from her was a picture taken when I was five. We were at Venice Beach, and she was teaching me how to swim. It was my last happy memory of her, the last time I ever told her I love her, and the last time she ever said it back.

    I sat on my bed, the only piece of furniture left in my home, and picked up the small brown picture box on the floor. I took one last look at the picture before deciding to put it away. I opened the box and there folded on top of old photos and tangled jewelry was the faded yellow post it note I found a few weeks ago. I gently picked it up and opened it, reading the words "project due in three days." I smiled, holding the note and the picture of my mother and I. Here in my hands are the last two things linking me to Los Angeles…..my mother…..and Spencer. I sat looking at these two pieces of my life, and instead of putting them away, I decided that they belonged here, in this city, with the rest of my childhood memories.

  "There either is or is not a way things are. The color of the day. How it felt to be a child. The feeling of saltwater on your sunburned legs. Sometimes the water is yellow. Sometimes it’s red. The color in memory depends on the day."

  The quote rang in my head the whole drive to Venice Beach. I don’t remember where I heard it or who told it to me, but it just fit with what I planned to do that day. Earlier I decided to burn the note and the photo, and scatter the ashes into the ocean. A ceremonial way to say goodbye to my past and my old life. A way to free myself from the ghosts.

  Venice, with it’s colums and canals, much like the real Venice but slightly cooler because of its street performers and surfers. I walked along the coastline and finally stoped in front of tower number five. I found it fitting, being that I was five the day the picture was taken and that on the 5th day of April, Spencer and I shared our first kiss. I closed my eyes and said one final goodbye before scattering the ashes into the wind. A tear ran down my cheek, and for the first time in a long time, I felt free.

  I walked back through the park and giftshops. I thought about the past and the things that i’ve done. Over my life, and where in that brief, wild and violent time it had gone. And then, just as quickly as she vanished those many years ago she came back.

 "Ashley," a familiar voice said "Is that you?"

  I spun around, and the memories I had just given to the ocean came rushing back. And we stood there staring, unable to move or breath.