DEATH IS A FUCKING INFECTION

My recent "vacation" was not all vacation. While it was an incredible time spent with family, the intent was to visit one of our all time favorite spots for vacationing, and while there, spread the ashes of my mother in a Caribbean inlet that she had watched countless sunsets from. ​

Even in writing this, my easily captivated brain wanders through traces of my mother's memory. There is a want to wash them all away, but a constant longing to re-think and re-touch those flashes of life at the same time. Hence the infection
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The tears are consumed not only by the pool that they created in my hands as I hide my emotions in a bathroom stall at work, but also by the creases in my face from the smiles that interrupt them as thoughts of her life and legacy race across the panoramic screen that is my minds eye.

Watching as my step father (Mom's husband for the better part of her short life) carried the ashes to the location for our little "ceremony", I saw his steps get heavier and more labored one after the next.

Walking through the scene that Mom had photographed so many times from her perch in a lounge on the beach, or a chair on her deck, and during her walks with her husband... thinking of being the focal point in an image that she never saw coming... this hurts... I feel this.

With spray from the waves splashing onto us all, and our feet wet from the ocean, we had reached "the spot". The sun had just started to touch the horizon, and if Mom were there, her camera would have been working overtime.

Gorgeous. Terrible. Unsettling. Liberating.

The waves thrashing the rocks with a volume that seemed to mute everything else, the setting suns rays dancing across waves as ambient light strangled the true colors of things, and individual emotions and lack of understanding written on the faces of everyone witnessing this final farewell.

From the small box slowly came the ashed remains of a force this world will likely never know again. As the breeze carried the fine powder, the ocean seemed to calm and quiet. As the tears followed the ashes down, the sun seemed warmer in its final stages of the day, and the humidity seemed to embrace us all one last time.

Its in these memories that I find the infection. I find the repeat and flashes of those moments, and can re-live the moments from any angle. I see the faces, I feel my wife's hand in mine with a gentle squeeze, and I see my children looking up to me for answers in how to react.

If anything, Mom left us all with one more powerful, beautiful set of images to look back upon and embrace when the sorrow that follows the infection seems to resurface and sting the most.

I miss you Mom. I love you Mom.