We interred most of Mom’s ashes in a pretty pottery urn inside a vault in shared plot with Dad’s at the cemetery in Ephrata, but we took a small portion to scatter. Is it grim that we saved some of Dad’s ashes all these years, just for this moment?
On a hot sunny day, we mixed the remains of Mom and Dad together, and drove them and ourselves to New Jersey.
This was the beach of our childhood: cream colored sand tinted with grey. Flat blue sky over slate grey ocean. Aunt Joanne had a house here and we spent many summers splashing around and enjoying custard soft serve and seafood.
This trip was both joyful and solemn. We built a sandcastle, decorated it with feathers and shells and sand dollars, sprinkled their ashes into the moat and then washed them out to sea with buckets of ocean water. Then we went running into the ocean and got yelled at by the lifeguards for not being inside the flags. It was just like our childhood beach trips.
Only without any parents. Bittersweet.
