Ashes

The Irish Sea, a mix of turquoise, black, and white foam; violence and comfort. It bashes the rocky shore rising straight up, challenges us to cross to the island where you, Dan, now live. Friends and I arrive on the last tiny ferry to the Great Blasket. Rubber dinghy brings us to the landing dock. We head up the slipway, along the side of a great ridge, cutting through heather with a stumble and heavy legs to the top. We locate the Roman ruins; it doesn’t seem like the place I remember. Brian calls me over to a standing stone, upright in an indented circle. That is the spot. The one we discussed. It’s where to rest when we die. I find a photo of you in your woolen cap, standing just there. Twenty years later, I sink down into the indentation that cups the stone. Brian reads the 23rd Psalm, tears streaming. Orla recites a Farmer’s Prayer. I clear away a tuft of long waving grass in front of the stone. There is a hole, as if waiting all its existence for your ashes. Into it goes the contents of the smallest of three plastic containers I’d brought. I cover it with the grasses and Orla hands down three stones she’d found. I place them as instructed, standing on end, touching, like the three of us there with you, heads together, holding one another up. The air is fresh and suddenly, we are all hungry. Do you think Dan would mind if we ate? she asks. We eat everything we’d brought – large Irish cheddar cheese sandwiches on sourdough, salted Tayto crisps. We walk down again to the abandoned Islander village, going further to the long white beach. Our legs hurting and tired, we are purified and emptied out. He is there, and we are alive. Dinghy and ferry back home where I get a bit drunk on rosé wine and all is celebratory and well. It is done. It is done. Everything is perfect. In fact, everything is perfect now all the time: the good and the bad; the present that exists thanks to the past and the future; the moment that is only the moment because we have lived and will live. I understand, dancing on the edge of a cliff, on the head of a pin.

Erica Marks recently retired from a 40-year career in fundraising to focus on her literary vocation. Her current project, What Comes After, reflects on widowhood and loss. Her work recently appeared in The Poetry Distillery. She holds an M.A. in Arts Administration and lives in the Hudson Valley.

A Song for Erica