Before my mother died, she was very clear that she wished to be cremated. She and I had taken my dad’s ashes to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to scatter them in the bay of a place that we loved dearly and had visited often in my childhood. Because she loved the sea, she told me to pick a nice ocean vacation place and take her there to be scattered. Of course, I knew that returning to Puerto Vallarta was in order.
I made my reservations. Travel day arrived and I had decided to wrap the box of her cremains in pretty wrapping paper, as if it was a gift. I didn’t know if it’s legal or not to transport cremains across an international border so I was trying to be clever by disguising the little box as a present. Into the suitcase she went, all prettied up.
My mother had a wicked sense of humor and I can’t help but think that she engineered what happened. When I arrived in Puerto Vallarta my luggage was nowhere to be found. I had literally lost my mother. It was a long two days before I got a call that my suitcase had been found and was waiting at the airport. I got a taxi immediately and went to pick her up.
The next task was to find a way to take her ashes out into the beautiful bay. There was a place that rented individual little motor boats, so I rented one and started out into the bay. When I got far enough from the beach I unwrapped my mother and prepared to slowly empty the contents of the box into the blue water. As I started to scatter her ashes, three dolphins swam alongside the little craft I was in and kept me company until all of her joined the salt water that she loved so much. Those were sacred moments.
Some years later, two friends were planning a trip to Puerto Vallarta. I told them about my parents having been “buried” in the ocean there. While they were there they kindly bought two roses and took them to the edge of the waves. They said a prayer and threw the roses into the water. They stayed a few minutes out of respect for my parents. Then something really sweet happened: the waves washed the roses back on to the beach, but this time they were crossed one over the other, joined together again. They took a picture to prove how the roses were placed upon to the beach.
My parents weathered a lot of storms together. I’m not surprised that the roses came back attached to each other.