Papa Joe’s Ashes

My dad always wanted his ashes spread in the Gulf Stream, the big current flowing past Florida that eventually crosses the Atlantic and warms Europe. He wanted his ashes traveling all the way to Ireland, on that current. He had conducted lots of research on sea turtles and their relationship to ocean currents, while working at the University of Miami. His urn and ashes had to wait four years in my living room, but last week we finally got around to making the trip, my siblings arriving from as far away as Colorado. After living in Siberia-like conditions this winter, they were rather pleased with the Florida Keys on a balmy Spring Break weekend in March. Jackie, my brother Matt’s sun-starved daughter from Colorado State, was dressed for Spring Break.

At any rate, Captain Don Clark at Whale Harbor Marina in Islamorada, a good friend, volunteered to take us out on his comfortable charterboat Sea Horse. Though it had been windy or breezy in the Keys for weeks, the wind completely stopped during or three-hour tour. We headed offshore into glassy blue water and perfect conditions. Don has done a number of these ceremonies in the past, after 30 years at the same dock. Once offshore, he positioned his boat so that the ashes would drift away from us, heading north with the current. We didn’t have to worry about the wind blowing dust back into our faces, as sometimes happens during these ceremonies. (As in the movie The Big Lebowski).

It all went well. We dropped 10 small wooden sea turtles into the current, along with red Bougainvillea flowers now blooming in the Keys. Also a few of his orange drift cards, that faithfully follow the current without interference from the wind. Everything drifted off to the northeast, where the current curves around Miami. A northerly breeze later that night pushed the arrangement further into the Gulf Stream, towards Cuba, where they probably picked up speed.

We all sipped from a bottle of Guinness Stout, his favorite beer that had been sitting in the cabinet with his ashes these few years. The beer was way past its prime, of course. The remaining beer went into his beer mug, then into the Atlantic. His favorite engraved ceramic beer mug, stored and used in McGuire’s Pub in Pensacola for so many years, was saved at the last moment; somehow we couldn’t pitch it overboard, down to the reef far below. 

A somber event, but it went well. Captain Don said he hopes his kids can do the same for him in a similar classy style, when his time is due. We returned to port at a leisurely pace, and dockside gawkers and tourists wanted to know where our fish were. At midnight that very night it became St. Paddy’s Day, so well before then we set up chairs under a huge ficus tree behind the motel and between the cars, cranked up the music and sang many an Irish tune. The Jamesons smoothed the way. We sang many a maudlin tune like Fields of Athenry, since the Irish have a colorful and sometimes tormented history. My dad would have liked that one.

Meanwhile, his ashes continue their progress towards Ireland and we will miss him. What was that song by Guy Clark about his dad, called The Randall Knife…

My father died when I was forty
And I couldn’t find a way to cry
Not because I didn’t love him
Not because he didn’t try
I’d cried for every lesser thing
Whiskey, pain and beauty
But he deserved a better tear
And I was not quite ready

So we took his ashes out to sea
And poured `em off the stern
And threw the roses in the wake
Of everything we’d learned
When we got back to the house
They asked me what I wanted
Not the lawbooks not the watch
I need the things he’s haunted