Ashes of Glittering Fire.

"Listen, whatever it is you try
to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you
like the dreams of your body,
its spirit
longing to fly while the dead-weight bones
toss their dark mane and hurry
back into the fields of glittering fire
where everything,
even the great whale,
throbs with song."

            ~ Mary Oliver excerpt from the poem Humpbacks

This is the ocean, this place of glittering fire.

Getting ready to receive Gary's ashes
Greeting the water.

Right now I want to cry because it is the place where I splayed my uncle Gary's ashes in wide fans along the current.  I want to cry because I waited 9 years to swim him out to sea. It took that long for Aunt Robbie to be ready to release her partner, to let him diffuse back into the tides.
I thought the task would be heavy, sodden ashes sinking fast and the weight of it on me as I tread water.  I was afraid my legs could not hold us both up, could not pump fast enough.

He said as he lay waiting for cancer to take him, "I want my ashes sent into the ocean and I want Sarah to take them there."
I'm crying because when I actually dove into the water and felt her familiar brush along my lower back, my thighs and streaming from my toes, I came up smiling.  I knew this was not a sad thing.  It took my breath away to know this, and I sat ebbing in the tide with a full chest.  I've never written about it because I've been afraid I could not do justice to the grace I found in the water that day.  Maybe this is why Aunt Robbie waited so long.

She wanted every detail to be perfect.  We spent over $200 on flowers from the markets of downtown Los Angeles.  I think it was Wall Street.  The sidewalks smelled like piss and I saw whole logs of feces in the gutter.  I kept my daughter close as we moved briskly through a paradox of homeless, brown wanderers and brilliant blossoms of every color.  The blossoms billowed out from cardboard cylinders and I couldn't help but find them equally tragic to the street addicts who were their neighbors. Both were so full of life yet doomed to die too soon.  We chose colors of purple and yellow.  We bought orchids and hydrangea and roses to throw into the water.

The flowers and my daughter Sophie

On the boat there was fresh coffee and pastries.  The sun came out with unexpected fervor.  We took off our jackets and lifted our faces to her from the white-washed deck.  Again I was surprised by how bright everything was in spite of the occasion.
The navy came in crisp white and played the trumpet because Gary was a firefighter for 36 years.
I was struck, by how handsome government ceremony can be.

The boat captain also wore white.  He was straight and tall with a good sense of humor.
"Who is the diver?"  He asked.
Once again I felt inadequate.  I am not a diver, only a strong swimmer and lover of the water, but I stepped forward.
There was some confusion about my diving without certification.  He said it was not permissible.  Absolutely not.  Perhaps today would not be so perfect after all.
Then he found out I would wear no scuba gear.  Only fins and my bare skin.
"Oh, well that's just fine," he smiled.  "No problem there."

Aunt Robbie wanted me to wear a wet suit.

Back to shore wearing the necklace of Gary's ashes.

"I really don't think I'll need it," I told her.  But I smiled and let her rent one from Sport Chalet anyway, just in case the water was choppy or too cold.

But when I got out onto that ocean, when I smelled her salt, and heard her roar, I could not dishonor her by pulling a thick layer of rubber between us.  I knew I could trust the water to do her part.  I would do mine.
Uncle Gary would understand this.  He was a diver for 50 years.  He took dive lessons from Mel's dive shop at age 14.  At age 21 he was the youngest trained scuba instructor to come out of LA county's UICC (underwater instructor certification course)  He died September 6, 2005 at 64 years old. His true love was apnea (breath hold) or free diving.  He did not like the encumbrance of tanks, preferring to kick freely and swim, to turn as a dolphin might.
The water was his mother, as she is mine.  I know she will not hurt me.  If I trust her and swim when it is time to swim...float when it is time to float.  She will hold me.

I loved my Uncle Gary.  He took me snorkeling on the So. Cal coast.  I wore a coral one piece swimming suit.  I was 14 years old, my hair wild as a lion in the coastal air.  He let me wear his fins and his snorkel.  He gave me a small knife and taught me how to rip muscles off the rocks.  I'd pry them open and take the meat underwater to feed the fish.  They swarmed around me in a solid current like a dream.  The ocean opened her twinkling jewelry box.  She let me turn over her treasures in my hands, with fingers that glowed white under water.  I floated on my belly, suspended between two worlds and marveled at how I could be in the water and yet there was endless air.
He let me stay... and stay...and stay while he kept watch, my casual sentinel.  He didn't bother me about time or sunblock.  He just held his post on the rocks, a wise old seagull, smiling, assuring me I could take all the time I wanted. He knew what was happening.  He knew I was falling in love.

In the water with Gary's ashes October 2014

As I released his ashes to the water, all I felt was joy through my entire body.  My legs pumping hard in the fins, keeping me upright and worthy of my faith in them.
"Do you see it!  How beautiful it is?  Can you see it!" I shouted up to the people on the boat.
They looked down to me from another world, from a world I had just left.
I wanted to stay here with Gary, and felt I knew him better in that moment than I ever had when he was alive.
As the last trace of grey dispersed to blue, I tipped back into the cradle of waves.  I let them hold me as my chest expanded, a natural buoy.  I can still close my eyes and conjure it, that depth of breath.
My body became a thin flat film over the water, and I don't know how long I laid there.  I felt the captain yelling to me.  I looked up to find he was smiling wide at me from the boat deck,
"You gonna stay out there forever?"

"I would if I could," I told him, and he smiled even wider.