I traveled alone with my almost two-year-old from Dallas to Pawley’s Island in September 2014. We met my Dad and stepmom and my stepmom’s brother and his wife there. It was a nice beach vacation, though one of the primary purposes of the trip was to scatter the remains of my stepmom’s mother, who had died earlier that year. What follows is a short, creative non-fiction piece I wrote about that. On a lighter note, Pawley’s Island had a great sandy beach that is great for kids – it’s wide and long and offers plenty of sand for castle-making. Enjoy!
“Want to know what human ashes look like?”
My stepmother fingered the grayish, sand-like remains of her mother through a Ziploc bag. “Occasionally, you can feel chunks of bone.”
I studied the contents, too squeamish to hold them, and wondered which parts had already settled into the glass vase on a table overlooking the beach. My family had rented the condo via VRBO mostly for its beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows. “She always said she wanted to live in a little place by the ocean,” my step-aunt explained. “Now she will.”
Aunt Mary had poured some of the remains of my step-grandmother’s body—a body that had both served and failed her—into that vase. It could have been part of her heart, a heart that once loved an abusive man. That same heart had loved cats and horses and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Or maybe it was a piece of hipbone—bone that ultimately cracked under the pressure of age and a malnourished frame. Or maybe it was her hands. I hope it was her hands. Those hands had held and cared for her babies, held tight to the things she had, sometimes very little, but held them nonetheless. She used those hands to wash the laundry belonging to her husband’s mistress, and to shield the rest of her body from harm. They must have been strong hands.
If it were her eyes that were planted in that vase overlooking the South Carolina coast, they would see the joy: the sun-worshipers in exaltation, the families splashing nearby, the waves lapping at the shore, clinging to the earth as they recede. This, she would understand.
Her children waited for the perfect day to release what physically remained of their mother. At least, that’s what they said. They clutched to those ashes the way my toddler glued himself to my leg in the ocean, like those waves clinging to the shore.
Then they let go. Just as their mother had done many months before. Just as we all do, one way or another. The wind carried away some of the ashes and buried others into the beach. It looked as though they had disappeared. But to strangers on the beach, they look like sand and shell.
