Where We Took Mom’s Ashes

Once years ago I looked at a map and decided, there, I want to climb to the highest point in New Hampshire. So I hiked far enough in, slept in a very buggy forest, then spent the whole next day climbing. Food shelter clothing cooking pots flashlight notebook toothbrush forty pounds on my back sometimes climbing with two hands and both feet, up up up, and I was sweaty. It was sketchy, some steps. But I kept myself alive, and I was almost up. I saw a puff of white smoke above. I kept climbing. Another. What could it be? I imagined some geothermal phenomenon. The puffs continued periodically. I kept climbing, curious.

At long last, I reached the top. I pulled myself up over the edge and stood to look around. A tiny train full of children, I shit you not, puffing round and round. A snack bar. People all over the place, dry clean people with cameras. There’s a road to the highest point in New Hampshire, you see. Yes, a road.

So years later, I have a grant, bags with wheels, a family, and here we are in Southern India. I begin to get to know some kind Hindu folks, and I mention that my mom has died recently, that I’ve brought her ashes and I want to put them in the sea. Ah, Varkala, each of them says, happy to know this of me. Varkala is the place, apparently, where people have put the remains of their loved ones for years. There’s a ceremony, and as a matter of fact it also washes away all your sins. Outstanding. We get on a train.

My mom wanted to travel more than she was able in her life. Water, I think, is a good way to travel great distances if you are in tiny lightweight fragments. Or soluble, even. I know, of course, that this is a giant metaphor, that her travels are well underway, but still.

We drop our bags at our grubby guesthouse and walk. I can hardly wait to lay eyes on the Arabian Sea. We walk the dirt path between two shops and go straight to the edge of the cliff to look over at the beach. You know, right? We look down and there spread over the beach are hundreds of Europeans, naked like babies. Colorful umbrellas jammed in the sand like the flags of many nations. Dogs and Frisbees. We are standing in a parade of hotels and shops and restaurants. An ashtray on every table. Jewelry, tapestries, bottles of water on display.

I am cranky, of course. Arrogant. I’m not here for the croissants. I brought my mother here for chrissakes. So we climbed the broken stairs down to the beach. The travelers weren’t really naked, turns out. We played in the sand. Splashed like everybody else.

This too is sacred ground. The grilled swordfish. The Scandinavian party of twelve.

Mom would like it here.