This weekend we acknowledge and say thank you to those who have worn a uniform in the armed services; Veterans Day is about both gratitude and respect.

I grew up in the U.K., where the observance is known as Remembrance Sunday. It’s a day layered with meaning because it covers both Veterans and Memorial days in one.

Here in North Carolina, I am also marking this weekend as a moment for pause and reflection and celebration and gratitude for my parents. Dad left this world November 14 2022, then Mum joined him September 15 this year.

Epilogue:

We have already celebrated both their lives, saying goodbye as a family and a community as soon as Dad, and then Mum, passed. But yesterday Rebekah and I did something for them together, and we set their ashes on a journey that is a beautiful epilogue both in symbol and in fact.

I hadn’t intended to wait this long. But last year it was too much for Mum to come out on the water, so it worked out as a serendipity that they would be together, and I am so glad that it did.

I didn’t have a date in mind but last week, when we returned from the cruise, I realized immediately I needed to take care of this before the anniversary of dad’s death.

This was not another funeral, not another memorial, not anything remotely formal at all. This was, and I understood this intuitively, just for me (and by extension, Rebekah).

Growing up, there were four of us in our little nuclear family unit: Mum, Dad, Geoff, Derek; and, possibly selfishly, I simply needed to mark its conclusion.

The Gulf Stream:

So we asked Katherine and John Peiper if we could go out onto Falls Lake in their boat; it’s a stunningly beautiful place. Some molecules of the ashes will make their way over the dam and down the Neuse River, the current will take them past New Bern and then the Outer Banks, eventually getting caught up in the Gulf Stream before circling around and into the English Channel and maybe the beach at Folkestone.

Friday afternoon was gray, drizzly, cold, and a little blustery. It was, as I said when we boarded the boat, “Kind of British out here.”

Mum and Dad both loved the ocean. Dad especially enjoyed a cool and blustery day.

I may not have told you all this before, but when Grace and David Maul made the decision to move to the USA – burning their bridges and setting up home here – they decided to do it right, and booked a January 1981 passage on the S.S. Canberra, making the transatlantic crossing that is still unchecked on my bucket list.

It is only fitting that they cross the oceans one more time.

John anchored the boat deep in a quiet place, a long way from where we put in (I dropped a pin at the location so, yes, we can find it again), and Rebekah and I sat on the swimming deck at the stern.

This video shows the serenity of where we anchored (it is best muted):

I quietly told the story of the Atlantic crossing, and how much my parents loved the water, and then I read the following scripture:

Deep calls to deep
    in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
    have swept over me.

 By day the Lord directs his love,
    at night his song is with me—
    a prayer to the God of my life.

Psalm 42:7-8

We poured the ashes into the water, slowly and reverently. I cried. Then the four of us joined hands as Rebekah offered a short prayer of gratitude and thanksgiving and hope and comfort.

I sat – we sat – quietly for a few poignant minutes.

Then we motored back, through the breathtaking beauty of autumn splashed all around Falls Lake.

“By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me— a prayer to the God of my life.” – Amen.

In love, and because love was the foundation of our life as a family. And, love defines our future too – DEREK