A Final Farewell

It was a weekend of tranquility, reflection, and peace.  A small group came together in the Big Sur, California area for a memorial service for a friend’s husband who had passed away several months ago.

A thoughtful memorial in our friend’s hotel room took place, with her husband’s life remembered, poems read, music interspersed.

~ “I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way. Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.”~rumi

The group proceeded to an isolated beach along the Big Sur coastline to bid a final farewell. Plastic beach pails were handed out, a shallow bowl was hollowed out in the sand, surrounded by turrets made of sand.  A trench was dug from the hallowed bowl to the breaking waves.

~ “Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes…..Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.” ~mary oliver

The ashes were placed in the sandy bowl, covered lightly with sand, and we waited for the waves to wash in and take our friend’s husband home to the sea.

~ “And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds a white cross streaming across the sky, its feet like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light of the river?”~mary oliver

~ “The day is coming when I fly off…”~ rumi

~ “…the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting…” ~mary oliver

~ “Let us look for secret things   
somewhere in the world,
on the blue shore of silence
or where the storm has passed,
rampaging like a train.
There the faint signs are left,
coins of time and water,
debris, celestial ash
and the irreplaceable rapture
of sharing in the labour
of solitude and the sand.”~pablo neruda

Photos: personal file