another scattering of ashes over the sea. as my own grandfather wished, and my own parents too. and now reading this email, written back in the summer of 2001:

My grandfather passed away and I arrived at home only after the funeral. He wished for a sea burial and we chartered a boat out to sea and scattered his ashes. Ashes I discovered is a misnomer. Sitting in the dust of a life were pieces of the cranium and other fragments of bone - curved, whitish, brittle - like broken pottery. Instead of simply tipping the urn, as I thought we might, we reached in and threw out heavy handfuls. Afterwards there was grey-white powder on my fingers. I have never believed in elaborate funerals. When I was 13, I went to a grandaunt's funeral and I felt exasperated by it then, as I still do. That the dead cannot know and a simple funeral is better for all. Your death doesn't need to be a waved in everyone's face. A sea burial of course is the ultimate reverse gesture - I approved - you release the living from yearly visitations to a grave, or offering joss-sticks at a temple; you do not burden the grandchildren of your grandchildren, who do not know you, and come reluctantly on a certain date with empty hearts and impatient eyes. But then - now I see that to drop the last tangible part of someone into the ocean - to let the water wash all away - to watch the pieces sink heavily - and to know that all that is irrevocably lost, i am not sure - maybe the living wants to be burdened, wants to have something to hold on to - a grave to go to, an urn to talk to. To be able to lay down flowers or offer up tea - to do *something*. But we scattered his remains into the waves. What remains then? I repunctuate the line to read What thou lovest well: remains. Sea burials mean that one must be forced to relinquish any remains. Letting go is the ultimate hurdle, isn't it? It is never the incident, it is always the afterwards. The one wants to leave cleanly and without traces, the other scavenges the debris for a gossamer of have-been with wild eyes. I carried the urn, tied up in a red cloth, on my lap and felt the wind on my face. He was an exceptionally strong man and I said over and over to him in my head - I am your granddaughter afterall - so let me have your strength because I need it most now. On reflection I think I should have trailed my hand in the water so that all of him would have been taken by the sea but as it was his ashes were on my fingers till we got home and I ended up washing it off guiltily. Down the sink, goodbye. Oh grandfather.

And I regret too, not being there as he died. What can one do, over 10000 miles away? Only to receive the news and live the aftermath. I know little of death - 2 dogs is all, and both times I was not there. And that is worse. I should want to be there at the end, to go through it all - for staggering under the pain is better than anguishing the exclusion, and knowing is better than wild surmise. No, the loss is common. But even in recognising that it is universal, you still want to make it yours. It matters little that many loved ones are lost, many loves are lost. Because even if it is so, even if everyone else experiences it, it's still your pain that you feel. There is no need to extend that experience to others, because it's your pain you feel, not the World's. And surely there is no need to reduce its significance just because it is the World's, because it is yours. I end this now, with an apology that I have made a pageant of my loss, as they complained of Browning, or was it Tennyson, and that I have nothing more cheerful to report, though life skips along merrily along outside the window.