A Rockaway Beach Local Taught Me Everything I Need to Know About Dying

Rockaway Beach in Oregon is known for its Twin Rocks, the big steam train downtown that you can ride, and the cement statues for sale at Flamingo Jim’s. My husband, Teigh, grew up going to Rockaway almost weekly to spend time at his family’s beach house right off Minnehaha Street. Every time we return, we are full of nostalgia and are comforted by the worn in buildings — their paint cracked from years of heavy coastal rains.

On this particular trip in May 2019, we were headed to a friend’s birthday weekend. Her and her buddies had rented an Airbnb, but there weren't enough rooms for everyone so we volunteered to bring our teardrop trailer to save a bed. We also had Indiana Bones our Airedale Terrier with us, and we figured that we would spare everyone his stinky farts.

As the sun set on our first evening there, there were suggestions to go to Rick’s Roadhouse for karaoke, and dares to do pushups in the frigid Pacific. The group instead settled for grilled hamburger patties between slices of white bread with ketchup, and long hours of heavy drinking.

Other than the birthday girl, who was a former teammate of mine from cheering together in college, we didn’t really know anyone there. But, we made it a point to try and make fast friends.

The Airbnb they rented was nicer than most places in Rockaway. The 5 or 6 bedroom home was situated on Ocean Blvd. The kitchen had beautiful granite countertops and tastefully selected beach motifs that all made up an expensive-feeling beach retreat.

It was a house you’d be more likely to see at an upscale spot on the coast, like Garibaldi or Manzanita. There was a hot tub and a nice firepit outside. It was an idyllic spot, just a short walk to the beach. Whoever lives here is rich. I remember thinking.

When Teigh and I went to bed that night, all tucked safely in our trailer, we had no idea that the few precious hours of sleep we would be getting would have to fuel us for the next day’s curiosities which would include finding a forgotten Aston Martin, rumors about a recent suicide, a priceless vintage guitar collection, and eventually someone gone missing.

We woke up to sun, a perfect 10 day. I made breakfast while Teigh packed our beach bag. After a long, cold winter, we were eager to catch our first sunrays of the warmer season. We had one thing on the brain: relaxing on the sand.

Teigh, dressed in a loud shirt with bold dinosaur print, lead the way down the sandy path to the beach, the group following slowly behind, trudging over driftwood and cursing their hangovers.

Down on the beach, Teigh spotted a glowing remnant of a driftwood fire. Taking our own wood, we stoked up the flames until we were all comfortably toasted from the sun and the radiating heat from the glowing embers.

This impressed everyone who came with us, but not enough to make them stay for more than an hour. One by one, the birthday group straggled back to the safety of the Airbnb to nurse their overindulgences and take a day nap.

Teigh and I decided to stay on the beach for the day, and he made me a little wind blocking lean-to for me. I dozed off while he read and threw a driftwood stick for Indy.

As I snoozed away, I thought about Teigh as a little kid on this very beach where his family would vacation. This was a special place, and I felt pleased at the serendipity of the thought of one day buying a house in Rockaway.

I stirred and rolled to my side, cracking my eyes open under the blinding sun. Out in the distance was a large driftwood log, and as I squinted to get a better look, the figure of a man appeared.

It seemed like he was looking at us, or maybe attempting to squint through us at the ocean. He had a curious disposition about him — legs crossed, an amber liquor swirling in a stout glass in one hand, a fat cigar in the other.

He had a red face from what looked like years of sun damage, and his big crusty ears stuck out like sails. On seeing me seeing him, he shifted in his seat making his way to stand.

I quickly looked away and grabbed a towel to wrap around me. He started walking over to us.

Teigh was sitting in a lounge chair by the smoldering fire and I took a seat next to him.

“You two look like bloody models!” a grizzly English voice called to us. “What it must be like to be beautiful and young in the most beautiful place on a day like today!”

We looked over at the man, hardly over 5'8. He stood there swaying, waiting for our response.

Once we got a good look at him, we decided we liked him straight away. What other old fart starts drinking hard liquor at 11am? He was the perfect physical manifestation of the word jolly.

We came to learn a lot about this man in the hours that followed. We learned that he was nephew to the late Pete Postlethwaite, that he had more vacation houses than someone could count on one hand, and that he owned the very house we were staying in that weekend. He was originally from Swindon, but he and his wife had bought the property in Rockaway years ago.

“I had a great life,” he said, recalling a past visit to El Nido in the Philippines. He talked about his life like it was all in past tense. He said he traveled the world, lived abroad, had a family.

“They can’t stand to look at me now, of course,” he added, a morose expression spreading across his wrinkled face. But then, he cracked a half smile as if he watched a bad memory float off into the waves.

I wondered what had happened, but it felt rude to ask. That is when he told us that he only had a few months to live. “I will be lucky if I make it ’til Christmas,” he said, staring down at his cigar that had now burned to a nub.

I was in a heavy state of grief myself — Just two years prior I had lost a beloved friend who was around his age. Thinking of a nice person like Tony kicking the bucket at 53 was a sobering thought.

He must have noticed the somber look on our faces because he offered us a swig of his scotch. Turns out he had brought the whole bottle with him. I took a drink.

“I have a soft spot for lonely old salties, you know,” I said passing the bottle back to him, thinking of my late friend. He smiled at me.

We took turns passing the bottle around, the sun blazing high in the sky. The day wearing on.

“Well love, when you are as old as me, and this close to death, you kind of learn to seize every moment you possibly can,” he tipped the bottle letting the last few drops of the warm alcohol slide into his mouth. “So, you want to come check out my other house?”

It must have been around 3 o'clock by then, and the sun was getting lower. We figured the birthday group back at the Airbnb were likely still too hungover to notice us missing.

Maybe it was the buzz of the scotch, or the sun exhaustion, or maybe it was that we wanted to take his advice and seize every moment we could — whatever it was, we decided to join him.

As we walked over to his other house, which was just a few blocks from the Airbnb, he told us about his vintage Guild guitar collection. Our ears perked up because both of us play. “Maybe you two can sing me a song,” he said, stepping over a big driftwood stump.

We nodded happily, a little drunk, Indy prancing full of curiosity behind us.

The house we came upon was a 4-story mammoth. I was looking at the highest window when he called for me to watch out.

“Don’t walk into the Aston, darling,” he said sweetly. I looked ahead of me. I was about to trip into a 2019 pristine Aston Martin parked neatly in the drive way. I had never seen one up close before.

“Wouldn’t matter if you walked into it,” he added under his breath. “Piece of shit.”

Just under our new friend’s jolliness was a sort of sour malcontent that came out in small moments like this. I started to wonder what it was he did to make all this money. Maybe he made it big investing in stocks, or maybe it was inheritance money from his rich and famous movie star uncle who had died just a few years prior.

We walked into the house through the back door. The room opened to high ceilings and molding on every wall. Paintings and portraits of women were hung carelessly. Naked women. Pinup girls. Dancing Latinas in billowing skirts. Some of the paintings were hung rather crooked, and other ones had fallen on the floor. Beauties forgotten.

And then — the guitars. He began to show us the first room which was lined floor to ceiling with vintage Guilds, just as he promised.

“But that’s not all of them,” he said to me.

With that, he lead us up a spiral staircase to a studio on the top floor. “This is where the money is,” he said pointing to the row of Guilds that hung proudly. Some of them had signatures on them, from which famous musicians I couldn’t tell.

“Go on then,” he said handing me one. “This one is my favorite.” I started to strum the guitar and noticed immediately that it was out of tune, and the strings were about as old as the guitar was. It was like it hadn’t been played in years.

Just I was going to ask him for a tuner, there was a noise in the kitchen and he hurried out the door.

Shouting. Yell whispering. Then, a few minutes later, footsteps back up the staircase.

“Sorry about that,” he said as he entered back into the room. His face was beet red and he seemed out of breath.

“Looks like Michael woke up, so it’s time to go.”

I looked at Teigh, panicked. What the hell did we get ourselves into? We thought he lived here alone.

I carefully hung the guitar back on it’s hook and we sauntered out of the room, trying to step quietly as we made our way. I saw a guy in the kitchen with his back turned to us. The front of his hat had a big green “M” on it. Michael.

He turned around upon hearing us enter the room, and met our gaze. He had puffy under eyes, crooked teeth, and a round belly from too many energy drinks.

I thought Michael was going to reprimand us, but instead he cheerfully invited us all down to the beach. We didn’t know what to think, but we agreed. We wanted to leave.

As we walked along, Michael started to harass our new friend in a joking tone.

“You old scum ball,” he said, a middle-of-Oregon twang in his voice. Pretty soon they were laughing and calling each other names. The tension softened.

“Sorry about that back there,” Michael said to us after a moment. Our new friend was out of earshot. “Those are my dad’s special guitars. He died a year ago today.”

Teigh and I looked at each other. The guitars weren’t his. He lied to us.

“It isn’t your fault,” Michael went on. “Old Tony has been like a father to my brother and I. After dad died, he stepped in and helped us with lawyer fees and kept us out of trouble.”

It wasn’t until this point we realized that our friend never mentioned his own name.

Tony was best friends with Michael’s dad. We later found out that he had committed suicide, and Tony had found him. Michael and his brother Matt were left to get their father’s things in order

All of the Guild guitars belonged to a dead man, and they hadn’t been touched in the year since their dad had died. They were one of the only things left that really mattered to his sons, and there I was trying to play one of them. A bit of frustration bubbled up inside of me. Why did Tony lie to us?

Michael alluded to having some type of a substance addiction. He liked energy drinks, that much was clear. He had already drank two since we left the house. But I had a feeling it was an addiction to something much stronger than caffeine.

Matt, Michael’s brother, was described to us as the responsible one, though Michael had a hard time admitting it outright. Matt was the one that held down steady employment, and was able to keep the house payments up to date.

Matt was also the one who would come to find us later that evening to apologize to us for the entire ordeal.

Tony was a bit too intoxicated to be called out for his shortcomings in lying to us, and for blindsiding us. My bubble of agitation simmered on low as we spent more time with them throughout the rest of the day.

As the hours passed, Teigh and I started to feel a cloud of devastation that seemed to loom over Tony and Michael— like an off-shore storm that was always threatening rain.

The two of them acted like old friends — as if they had endured years of storms together. They had a strong, yet strained connection with each other.

I got the sense that maybe Michael was tired of dealing with Tony, who would remind him that he was his father’s best friend every chance he could, then add “you cunt” to the end of his reminder.

When Michael tried to stand up for himself, Tony would quickly backtrack from his offenses. “I’m only kidding,” he’d say, then add “you prick” to the end of his apology.

As the four of us watched the sun go down from the vantagepoint on the beach, Indy pawed at the sand. We thought that maybe we should head back to the party and leave Michael and Tony to their rainclouds and bickering. The birthday girl was likely wondering where we’d been all day.

As the sun dipped just below the horizon, I got the eerie sense that this sunset would likely be one of the last ones Tony and Michael would see in their lifetimes.

After the sun went down, Michael promptly announced that he had to go. Before trudging back to his dad’s mansion, he gave Tony a hug.

“See you around, asshole,” he said, giving Tony a firm pat on the back. It seemed in that moment Michael had come to accept that he was stuck with this old guy from Swindon. Maybe he could put up with him for a bit longer. Maybe he could forgive him from bringing complete strangers into his dead father’s house, and tampering with his precious guitars.

Michael walked away, head hung low. An air of defeat in his stride.

Our liquor had worn off, and as we turned to say goodbye to our friend Tony, he had tears in his eyes. He gave us each a kiss on the cheek and said something that translated to, “Take care of each other, and live your life.”

With that, Teigh and I left him to stare ahead at the big empty ocean. He was just a shadowy figure there in the sand. It was only him, the ocean, and an empty bottle.

When Matt, Michael’s brother came by the Airbnb later, we were with the group sitting around the firepit in the backyard. He had a bottle of wine under one arm and light saber replica in the other — we thought perhaps the wine was a peace offering, and the saber as something to break the ice.

The group had no idea who this guy was, and got a bad feeling about him. He was rather large and muscular. He looked like he did manual labor and had just gotten off work. He had dirt under his fingernails, and calloused hands.

We did our best to calm our friends by waving at them. They had now filed inside, and locked the sliding glass door behind them.

Teigh and I stayed outside with Matt, and tried to understand what it was he wanted. Turns out he came to apologize for Michael’s kicking us out of the house, and the whole misunderstanding with the guitars.

We quickly accepted the apology, explaining that we had spent the rest of the day with Michael, and he seemed to be over it.

But that wasn’t the only thing Matt was there for. He was also looking for Tony. Apparently, he had gone missing. No one had heard from him in hours.

We checked the bedrooms inside the house, thinking that maybe Tony passed out in his bed forgetting it was rented for the weekend. He was nowhere to be found.

Matt eventually gave up, vowing to call the nearby pubs to see if he had winded up there. Teigh and I were concerned but also burnt out from spending the entire day with Tony. We figured he had passed out somewhere, maybe down on the beach where we left him.

We wished Matt good luck, and returned to the evening with our crew. We were there to celebrate my friend’s birthday after all. Our duty wasn’t to look for some guy we barley knew, who had lied to us in the first place.

Still, I couldn’t shake not knowing where he had gone off to. I searched for is profile on Facebook and sent him a friend request.

I got a response from Tony the next morning. All was well after all.

I never got the full story about where he had disappeared to that night, but over the next few months we kept in touch over Facebook. He would share about his travels — places in the UK, and Alicante in Spain. He asked about our wedding, which we invited him to. It ended up getting cancelled because of COVID.

One day in February 2020 he sent me this message:

“That kid Michael from Rockaway where you played a guitar at his house died a month ago. Drug overdose. Only 26. He was so broken with the loss of his dad.”

He said he was sad, but hoped Michael had found peace.

He continued to send me photos of his travels, encouraged me to keep working toward my career goals, and to keep seeking out my talents. More than anything, he kept giving me advice to always be my genuine self — which coming from him seemed a little comical, but I still took it to heart.

Once I pointed out that he wasn’t dead like he had thought he would be — that he had made it to Christmas. That is when he revealed to me that he didn’t actually have cancer like he said he did. He apologized, and said he was in a dark place at the time.

I couldn’t really verify anything he told me, come to think of it. Not the many houses he owned, or how he got his money — and now come to find out, he made up the fact he had cancer.

Maybe for Tony, it was sometimes easier to pretend than to face the harsh realities of aging and a life lost. He must have sensed the end of his life was near.

He died just 7 months after Michael overdosed. His wife let me know via his Facebook 3 months after it happened. My heart ached for her, but then again I didn’t know anything about her, or the type relationship they had together.

Those ever-present rainclouds must have finally washed both of them out to sea.

Tony remains a mysterious figure to me. How could someone be so jolly, yet so unhappy that he would fill his life with falsehoods?

There must have been something in his soul, as dampened as it was, that sought to reach for the light spots. I hope that maybe I became one of those illuminations for him there at the end.

Perhaps we were more than strangers on a beach to him. Maybe we were beacons.

Tony searched for all kinds of things that gave him glimmers that life still had more to offer him — in meeting new people, his travels, and more.

I think of how he filled that void for Michael and Matt — two young men who needed a father figure after the loss of their own. That was a glimmer.

He found glimmers in the glowing bud at the end of a cigar well enjoyed. He saw reflections of something more at the end of a bottle of scotch.

Maybe he found it at Rockaway Beach — in the many sunsets behind Twin Rocks.

All I am left with from our meet cute is his own words, grating in my head like distant seagull calls:

“Take care of each other. And live your life.”