We drove into the sun, with a pale moon still high in the sky, and we brought our father/grandfather/father-in-law/once-husband to the place he asked to be laid to rest.
The morning wind whipped around us, and the tide was beginning to flow, as we searched along the deserted beach for a place to leave him to the sea.
His daughter prepared the place.
His son placed him in.
Until that point, the small waves inching up the shoreline were a good ten feet away. Then suddenly, before he filled the hole, one wave reached and carried most of him away. Ah, we all thought — the sea is as eager for him as he was for the sea. It was odd, though, that none of the other waves had come up as far.
After they filled in the sand and were ready to place the flowers on the spot, another single wave obliterated all traces of where he had been placed. And so the flowers were left on the shore line and petals tossed into the spray.
And then we left him to the sea.
My photos of the trip are here.
Our daughter’s are here.
And our son’s are here
With b!X back in Portland, OR, who knows when we will be all together again as a family.
That is so lovely.
May he rest in peace, in the arms of the oceans that rule the tides, and whose currents are eternal.
Hi – I know b!X from online, from whedonesque & other places… Having sprinkled both my parents into the silt of Long Pond on the Cape just the week before, I feel a certain kinship with you’all on this occasion.
Looking at the beach, I believe it might be one in Truro where I once built a pagan-y kind of altar with my late father, from sand and stone and shells. It was a good time, and it’s a lovely place to lay someone to rest and give them back to the earth. The Cape can only be better for the good people that end up at rest in her beautiful self.
I’ve read your blog for a few months now, and have wanted to say before that I’ve enjoyed it, but it took this post to move me to do it.
Be well.