Goodbye

The sun rose Friday morning at 5:52 a.m. I stood on the beach, my sister to one side and my father on the other. The tide was slowly rising and a soft breeze was blowing in from the ocean. Gentle waves broke on the sand and lapped at our feet.

It’s time to scatter my mothers’ ashes.

She was supposed to join us for this vacation, share this beach house with us, see her grandkids, and come back to the ocean she loved so much. We made our vacation plans last November and had been looking forward to getting together here for months.

She died on Memorial Day, two weeks before our trip.

She had said many times that when she died she wanted to be cremated and her ashes scattered in a peaceful, tranquil place. Looking back, I wonder if she knew it would turn out like this.

So we’re standing here ready to fulfill her request. We really don’t have this planned out very well. Other than actually scattering the ashes, we don’t have a schedule for how to hold this little ceremony. While nominally Catholic, my mother hadn’t gone to mass in years. My sister rarely goes to church, my father not at all. So we don’t have formal prayers to say.

But I feel like we should do more than throw the ashes in the ocean and go have breakfast. It’s the only ceremony, service, acknowledgement of her life and death that’s going to occur. She had insisted on not having a wake, a mass said for her, or any other ‘event’ in her honor. Yet she deserves something. My thought was each of us would say a few words, something we remembered about her that was special, that described the kind of person she was, before scattering her remains in the ocean.

All week I’ve been thinking about what I would say. I never did come up with anything.

My sister is holding the container of ashes. “Should we just start, then?” she says.

“I’d like to say a few words first,” I say.

It just came out. I hadn’t planned it, much as I had tried. Taking the liberty of cleaning up the pauses, this is what I said:

"Mom, we’d planned this trip with the idea that it would be a chance for us all to get together again. I wish you’d been able to make this trip, to see us and to see your grandkids. I know how you love the ocean. I know you were looking forward to it. And I’m sad that you’re not here.

“You have meant so much to me over the course of my life. I’ve tried to think all week of a particular instance or event that illustrates how much you’ve meant to me over the course of my life, but I couldn’t do it. There are too many things to choose just one or two.

“And I think you know that I turned out okay.

“But I wish you had been able to watch my boys grow up. Mom, they’re such great kids, and I know you would have enjoyed getting to know them, watch them grow up into fine young men, and spoil them along the way.

“And most of all, I wanted you to see me be their dad. More than anything I wanted to be able to share that with you, to have you know that I’m going to be a good dad for my boys.

“It wasn’t meant to be.

“But I know you’re watching. I know you’ll watch them grow up from wherever you are. And I promise I’ll be the kind of dad that would make you proud.

“I promise.”

At that point I couldn’t hold back my tears, so I stopped.

My sister said a few words of her own. Out of respect for her, I’ll refrain from publishing them.

My dad said nothing. It’s not that he didn’t want to – he simply couldn’t.

My sister then opened the container and gently scattered the ashes into the water at our feet. We watched as a wave came in and took them away.

We stood there and stared at the ocean for a several minutes, saying nothing. We’d said all we could.

Slowly we made our way back up the beach, up the stairs and back to the rest of our lives.

Goodbye, Mom.

I love you with all my heart.