By and By

What became of those who loved this place, and why did they never return? The Kiberd Cabin has a view of the ocean, desperate and windswept, staring from the scrub brush. The doors are off their hinges, front steps long since rotted, a dark and musty smell drifting out from in. On the table, a couple hints of when and where. First, an issue of Good Housekeeping from October 2002. Maybe out of date when it arrived, but I’d wager it’s been more than twenty years since someone flipped those pages. On the cover, actress and comedian Carol Burnett. She’s still alive and in her nineties — is the one who left it here still living as well? Next to that, a sheet of notepad paper, with an advert for a realtor named Althea Bramhall — based in the town of Athol, Massachusetts. Seems likely this was a summer place for folks from that state. The family name Kiberd was penciled on an overhead beam.

I often think of what it means to remember, and how it’s so different from being remembered. The effort we make for a legacy, to hold something back in our absence, has odds on surviving no better than chance. Maybe some stranger will help to kick our stories down the line. This little cottage by the sea, which will return to nature by and by, lasts a little longer now. In this photo, for a few lines and thoughts, the impact made on me in passing. I can only think that the family had a few photos of their own. The sense of happy times seems real, as the mattresses rot and cookstove rusts, and scattered nails all underfoot suggest planned projects never finished. The future never came, so the present grows old in place, a child stunted that time catches up on. I return to the wind for a cold walk back, chasing the tide over rolling rocks. Now we’re both a little less forgotten.

February 27, 2026
Litchfield, Nova Scotia

Year 19, Day 6683 of my daily journal.