Burial at Sea

We spent last week on our annual family camping trip and took along my husband’s mother.  We took  her ashes, that is — she died last October.  We took the letter where years ago she had specifically written her wishes — a simple ceremony and her ashes scattered in the ocean. My husband read her words as we sat around the campfire at night and we had a nice time of remembrance.  We talked and told stories about her.  It isn’t all that often that the whole family is together at the beach and it was the perfect opportunity to honor her request.  My husband and I, our children and their spouses and the grandchildren all participated — from the oldest person down to the youngest, who recently turned two.  It was a meaningful commemoration and one that she would have liked very much.  She loved to tell people that she had had only one child but how he had had three and then those had children and that her only child magically turned into twelve people.  Not a good statistic for Zero Population Growth, I guess — but a thought that pleased her very much.