A long day...

I am very tired, but feel the need to write some of this down.

Left Swindon a little after 10am today with my Dad to drive down to West Wittering on the south coast.

Most of the journey was smooth but it being a Bank Holiday weekend, everyone was heading for the beach so the final leg of the journey took almost as long as the rest of the journey down.

This made us over an hour late in meeting my aunt Carol.

Mum was one of four children, all girls. Mum was the youngest. Various family fueds have divided the sisters. in the recent years, Mum spoke to both Carol and Jackie, but not the eldest sister Judy.

Jackie still spoke to Judy. Carol spoke only to Mum and would have been angry if she knew Mum had stayed in touch with Jackie.

Family eh?

Carol was always someone who Mum represented as very critical of my life and I have been wary of her since my teen years.

Now, all three sisters came to Mum’s service and Carol was very much isolated and clearly finding it harder than the other two, for obvious reasons.

So many the times I’d been told how judgemental she was of me and my actions - much of which I can now see as the folly of youth. I carry them around as mistakes and feel the guilt of them, but I feel it was unfair of someone many years my senior to judge me so harshly when I was indeed only a kid.

Despite this, my heart went out to her. I have been feeling so very isolated and I felt empathy for a woman who had lost the only member of her family she was still close to other than her own - now grown up - kids.

Dad and I had decided we wanted to scatter Mum’s ashes at West Wttering, which Mum loved os dearly. In the past decade she and Carol would take off for an almost annual holiday/pilgrimage to West Wittering and their childhood hometown of Chichester. They would build sandcastles and sand sculptures and eat Mum’s beloved Mr Softee ice creams cones and generally have a good laugh.

And bitch about me. And Dad. And Carol’s partner Dominique (nice guy). Etc.

I thought Carol could show us a spot Mum had really loved and by inviting just her and not the other two sisters we would give her one final connection to Mum. A way of acknowledging their bond. Dad was worried about cuasing offence to Jackie and Judy but accepted that we didn’t have to tell them and that they were unlikely to ask.

So the beaches themselves were jampacked, especially with the glorious weather.

Instead Carol lead us round the bay to a more secluded part behind the sand dunes, where dinghys were moored at low tide and the landowners and even organised a small crab pool. It was pretty cool, I have to admit.

We found a secluded spot away from others and walked out into the bay on the low tidealong a ridge of shingle.

Dad did the honours, scattering Mum into the water in a brisk channel of water flowing back out to sea.

It is very strange, to see one of your parents reduced to a green plastic bottle of ashes, with a white lid and her name printed n a white label.

So Mum is off and away on the tides. She can circumnavigate the globe, visit her old home in Guyana, see the sights she always dreamed of, or just stay where her heart was. Her Mum and Dad were scattered in the same bay, though further round.

Still no emotional release.

There is a bench nearby that overlooks this small bay and it was one Mum used to sit on everytime she came down. The plaque on the bench dedicates it to a Commodore, so it should be easy to find.

That’s it for tonight. Just wanted to get that down.

If you have been, thanks for reading.