Ashes on the sea .

 

It was a perfect evening. We met at the Seahorse Inn. Built on the shores of Twofold Bay in 1843, it's a classic Olde Englishe Inne with open fires, panelling and attic rooms.

At dusk we strolled down the beach towards the headland. A flock of shearwaters were riding the waves near the shore. They appeared to be sleeping, or ill. ‘Why have they gathered here?' we wondered as we walked on in our private world. Although there is development on the shores of Twofold Bay it is not intrusive, The buildings are shrouded in shrub so the place looks deserted and just how it must have looked when the first settlers arrived.

I appointed my niece, Joanna, to be the flower girl and carry the basked of red roses and dried petals off the same bush of Scarlet Queen Elizabeth that we used when my Dad died. We asked our son, John, to read a Preface for the Dead. ‘I may not have come if I'd known I would have to do that,' he muttered the next day, which only goes to prove that parents are wise in the ways of Not Telling All. He did it in beautiful ringing tones standing on a rock in the sea facing the setting sun. A good lad. I asked Joanna to read the Prayer of St. Francis. Make me a channel of your peace. And then played a tape of friend Anniebella singing ‘Let the Bright Seraphim' to trumpet accompaniment. She had given me the tape for Dad's funeral, but we had not been able to use it. It's a magical atmospheric happy piece, and as it played I put Mum's ashes (which I had carried all the way via Canberra in a Harrods bag. As a woman of great style, my mother would have appreciated that touch) into the sea where twelve years before we had put Dad.

One of my friends, who knew them both said to me when I told her of our intention, ‘Oh why don't you leave the poor old bugger in peace. He's been on his own for twelve years!'

It was the most enormously satisfying thing to do. My mum was a very private person and very bitter about the Church and prescribed religion. She would have hated any stranger being there reciting any mumbo-jumbo. It was perfect that there were just the four of us. We think we may take up a family plot there by the sea. And I'm sure my Dad would have been pleased, as he was a very loyal and patient man, and I felt it closed the brackets on their (somewhat difficult at times) marriage.

As the sun set, the roses we had thrown in the sea trailed up the sunbeam in the tide towards the sunset. It was still. It was private. It was perfect. We then went back to the pub for two bottles of the local white and a rattling good dinner.

But, next morning we walked along the beach and there were the bodies of fifty shearwaters washed up on the high tide mark. ‘It must be a virus or pollution,' said my husband. ‘Oh no,' I gasped ‘Not mother!' ‘No,' my husband reassured me, ‘the shearwaters were poorly last night before we did it.'

It was a perfect evening.