Saying GoodBye

Last week came on so quickly. Since my Dad passed on Thanksgiving, we were waiting for the time that we could say goodbye properly. Our plan from the beginning had been to scatter his ashes in the Cape Cod Canal. My Dad loved to fish and he spent many many hours fishing on the canal. At one time he held the record for the largest striped bass caught from land in the Canal. It was close to 5 feet long. Dad also proposed to my Mom at the top of the Railroad Bridge. All things considered, it was the best place for his final rest, and it was where he said he wanted to be. We planned to wait until June so that we could avoid the icy in the canal.

So, time flew by, and there I was in the airport in Tampa waiting for my flight to Boston....my delayed by 2 hours flight to Boston :-) I read an article while I was waiting about one line of thinking about what happens to us after we die. The short version of this article was that our perception of time is rooted in our physical existence. We perceive past, present and future, because of out physical ties to space and time. Without those physical ties, the author suggested, we float freely in time and space, full of potential and able to chose any direction and no direction. He posited that the possibilities are infinite, as the physical ties that root us are removed. A lot of this was based on Einstein and time and Quantum physics. It really got me thinking. As I finally sat on the plane, I was just engulfed in a sense of peace and well being. When it's all over, it never was or would be. We just are, pure and simple.

The next few days were a flurry of activity. In addition to preparing for the memorial service and the scattering of Dad's ashes, I was staying with my sister and her family. My nephew (10) and my niece (8) are great kids. I don't get to see them much, but when I do, I like to make the most of it. So, I went to the baseball games, and took them out shopping, and played Wii with them (what a fucking workout that Wii shit is!!). My sister and I laughed as we always have. We are 2 years apart and I can honestly say, I have the best sister on the planet.

Saturday came and the memorial service was beautiful. I drove the bus, and it was a very short bus :-) No sooner did I open my mouth, then the tears started and the throat closed. I swore I was over all the emotion. But as I stood there in front of friends and family that I had not seen for years, it struck me that Dad was not there. And then I remembered the article and realized that Dad was wherever and whenever he chose to be. We shared a lot of stories about Dad, and laughed...a lot. We had arranged for a buffet lunch and as I walked around to all of the tables, thanking everyone for coming, and chatting, I learned even more about my Dad. People shared funny stories with me that I had never heard before. It was a great tribute to a man who was loved by many.

The next day, we were supposed to go out on the boat to scatter his ashes. The weather did not want to cooperate. Between the fog and the pending thunderstorms, we had to cancel the boat trip. Not being ones to give up easily, my sister and her husband and I set about figuring out how to scatter Dad's ashes without a boat. The canal has a steep bank that leads down to a steep band of rocks and boulders before the water. We weren't sure we'd be able to get close enough to pour the ashes in. We were going to need to get them in from a distance. We toyed with putting the ashes in various porous containers and then using a fishing rod to cast the container into the water and reel it in , allowing the ashes to seep out. We finally settled on a somewhat crazy idea. We divided thee ashes up into 6 paper sandwich bags, one each for me, my mom and sister, her husband and two kids (my sister is eco friendly so these were highly biodegradable.) We then tore a few slits at the top of the bags. The plan was to use my nephew's lacrosse sticks to catapult the ashes the 20 fee to the water.

We all piled into the car and took Dad on his last drive. We drove by the two houses that my Dad built from the ground up, we lived in both of them as we grew up. When I say from the ground up, I mean everything from digging by hand the hole for the foundation to laying the bricks for foundation and chimneys to erecting walls and roof and doing all the electrical and plumbing. We then drove to the Canal and spent some time at the Railroad Bridge remembering Dad. There were too many people around to not cause suspicion with lacrosse sticks and paper bags, so we drove down to the parking area near Dad's favorite fishing spot. We slid down the slippery bank of grass and caught ourselves with the trees at the bottom. We said a few words of goodbye and the each of us took our bag, loaded our lacrosse sticks and "cast" Dad out into one of his favorite places in the world. The bags sank quickly and we knew that the bags would dissolve and the ashes would be picked up in the current and take Dad on a new journey. I tossed a wreath of flowers which was quickly caught in the current. We walked along the service road, watching that wreath as it floated peacefully down the waters that my Dad had loved so much. After about 20 minutes of watching and following, we said our final goodbyes and headed back to the car. On the way home, we drove by some of Dad's other favorite places, and laughed and told stories to my niece and nephew about their Papa. I really couldn't think of a better way to say goodbye.

The rest of the week went by quickly. My sister and I get to escape for a day to P-town, and we had a blast. We walked and shopped for 7 or 8 hours and had a great lunch at the Lobster Pot, one of my favorite places to eat in P-town. I got to see my nephew play in more baseball games, and got have lots of laughs with both my niece and nephew. The time went by so quickly. As I sat at the airport in Boston, waiting to board my flight home, I wondered at how quickly time went by, and then I was reminded of that article I read and realized that it was all relative. I still think about that article. Without the physical world to anchor us, it's all just infinite potential. For some that may be an uneasy thought, but for me, it sounds like Heaven!!