Above the water below the cliffs
It was inelegantly done.
Forgive my final lack of grace.
Wind-snatched from my last embrace
you returned
twirling in the waves
caressing me one last time
you were whirled and swirled away.
An expected current carried you to the west
to where they say the Havens lie
that Gray place over the horizon where,
they say, all departed heroes bide.
From the earth and through the flames
Into wind and water
Elemental, now,
…but still here, I hear your laughter.
~
A few short weeks ago – though it feels like months and months – I bought an Easter Egg that we both knew he would never eat. "But yes" he said, "the rituals must be observed."
And so the final ritual has now been observed. His ashes scattered to the winds and waters, with somewhat less finesse than either of us might have wished, but love and freedom spare no room for niceties, and he would simply have been amused at my ineptness.
Since his death I have been blessed in support as people remind me that 'you do not have to do this alone' but this, this one last thing I did have to do alone. This last rite wasn't about the whole of his life, it was about our life shared life, about me as well as him, about us. This was my private farewell. I drank to his memory and poured a libation to whatever gods might heed – because that was what we did. I read the poem for him that I'd read for my father, though its spirit probably speaks more of me than either of them, they both encouraged me in it. And I did get "a windy day with the white clouds flying".
A solitary gull flew back out of the west Jonathan-like it banked and circled and I could almost choose to imagine it dipped its wings before heading on towards the morning edge of the sky.
But waves kept on coming on the rising tide, a reminder that the world still turns, and I now need to draw a line.
