A vigorous little fish rattled the surface
In her last days, Christl said she wanted her ashes scattered off the beach at Alligator Point, about 50 miles from where we live and named for its shape, near where for six years we owned a little cottage in the woods. This beach was her favorite place to walk at dawn. Our sons and I tried to do this when we gathered at the time of her next birthday, but the beach was so crowded we could not find a private spot, so we scattered half the ashes off the nearby beach at Bald Point, also a favorite place to walk, especially at sunset.
Over the next two years, I scattered small portions of Christl’s remaining ashes in about 20 of the places dear to us, so she would always be part of them — the Wacissa River, Wakulla Springs, Lake Hall — many of them places I took her when we were courting. I flew to Vienna with our older son, where we joined with Christl’s sister and niece and grandniece at the edge of the Danube, near where she swam as a girl, scattered a cupful of Christl’s ashes, and watched the deep, swift current carry them downstream toward the sea.
Recently, I woke to a clear, sunny, cool day and suddenly found the heart to drive to Alligator Point beach.
There, I sat in the car a quarter hour looking at dozens of pictures of her, and of our 42 years together, while the memories grew into love and gratitude and longing and loss and grief and wonder. I lifted the plastic bag out of the crematory box — its contents had about the size and heft of a woman’s breast — and hid it under my shirt.
The beach was almost deserted. A round young woman in sunglasses lay on a towel chatting with her bony companion.
I walked across the powdery sand, then the firmer damp, then the packed wet sand at the water’s edge, to a spot well away from people, where I waded into the quiet surf, my feet sinking and sinking into a swirling amalgam of sand and water — and gently spread all the rest of Christl’s ashes onto calm, clear, moving water, then watched them slowly, slowly fan and spread, and fade out to sea, like a cloud reflected under water.
A vigorous little fish rattled the surface to sample the granules. I laughed: Christl would have loved that!
Fifty yards down the beach, two gentle black men swung a cast net for bait fish. When they netted something they couldn’t use, they tossed it to a great blue heron that stood about 8 feet away from them and caught it. As the men moved up or down the beach to cast in different spots, the heron shadowed them, then stood in place waiting, tall, completely still.
The sky was huge. And the sea.
Gerald Grow is a retired journalism professor. More at longleaf.net.