A Farewell To Dad

On Easter Sunday, I scattered my Dad’s ashes in the Arabian Sea on the coast of Southern Goa. I’d put considerable thought into the location for my Dad’s final resting place. He’d told me, many times, that he wanted to be somewhere warm and that he did not want to be stuck in the ground, so choosing a beach (he loved the beach and the ocean, and had lived the latter years of his life in Tampa Bay) felt right. But how to choose which beach was my dilemma. Florida didn’t feel right to me–he has no family there, no lasting connection, no roots. My father’s father was Portuguese, but Portugal enjoys a temperate climate and did not seem to qualify as warm enough. And while my Dad had no affinity for India, I chose Goa because it was once a Portuguese colony and Goa is always warm. So with trepidation, I said goodbye to my Dad on the day of resurrection in the land of rebirth.

I found it difficult to let go of my Dad’s ashes. When a person dies and is buried, there remains a permanent reminder of their life–a grave, a tombstone. But when a person is cremated, once their ashes are spread, they are gone, permanently. No physical marker remains. While scattering my Dad’s ashes, I felt sorrow, of course, and also anxiety. Was I making the right choice? In the end, I decided to hold on a little longer–I kept a small amount of the ashes.

As Easter Sunday passed, my anxiety grew. My disenchantment with India was also growing and thinking that I’d left my Dad–most of him–in a country that wasn’t good enough for him caused me to regret my choice. I wished I could go back to that beach in Cavelossim and scoop him up, hold on to him, take him somewhere else.

In Bombay, on the shuttle bus from the domestic air terminal to the international terminal, I overhead a conversation between a British man, who’d been living in Goa for 10 years, and a man from Holland. The Brit was giving a discourse on India’s most beautiful and pristine beaches. His choice: Cavelossim. He described the white sandy beach and the clear azure waters of the quiet fishing beach. Then he said there was one spot in particular he thinks is blessed–a place where the Arabian Sea meets the River Sal (“sal” is Portuguese for “salt”). He said that stretch of beach is, in his opinion, the most serene. That was the exact location of where I scattered my Dad’s ashes.