Burial at Sea
A kayak is a great vehicle for burials at sea, and I have been called on twice to provide such services for close friends.
It was in 1991, shortly after the purchase of my first kayak, the 9 foot Frenzy. I used to take the Frenzy to the beach every weekend, and one Sunday while sitting on the beach with my wife, with my kayak right next to us, Susan Mehrlust walked up and started asking numerous questions about the kayak and kayaking. I told her everything I knew about both subjects at the time (which was not all that much), and we became friends that day. We had never met before that day, even though she lived only one block north of us. It soon became obvious why everybody loved Susan.
When Susan bought her kayak, I had by then been presented with my Christmas surprise (1994), and was the owner of two kayaks: the 9-foot Frenzy and the 15 foot Scupper Pro. My wife Cass would sometimes paddle the Frenzy and accompany me in my Scupper Pro. One Sunday we will never forget (and I know Susan has never forgotten), we met Susan on the beach with her kayak, an 11-foot Scrambler. The three of us paddled out into the ocean and when we were a little more than a mile out we became completely surrounded by dolphins. We all tried to count them and determined there were more than 40 of them swimming in a circle around us. It was beautiful, and we enjoyed it immensely, but it was not too long after that wonderful event that Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer. She attacked it the way one would expect a highly successful physical education teacher to attack it: she tried every known treatment for it and never complained. When the cancer went into her bones, she had a bone marrow treatment that almost beat her – but it didn’t. She fought on for almost nine years and during that time she became a poster girl for the cancer ward at one of our local hospitals; her photo was even on a large billboard on Interstate 95, at the northern entrance to the city of Jacksonville, advertising the cancer treatment at the hospital. She served on the board of the Donna Hicken Foundation (set up by a local TV Anchor who is still fighting breast cancer) and became the face of the fight against breast cancer in this area. I should mention that breast cancer seems to be an epidemic in our area, and my own wife is now a 20-year survivor of the dreaded disease.
When it became obvious that Susan was eventually going to lose her battle, she asked me if I would, when the time came, paddle her ashes out into the ocean. Not wanting to admit the inevitable, I offered her a deal: I would do what she asked if she would promise to do the same thing for me should I precede her to the next life. She added a section to her Will stipulating that she was to be cremated and her ashes were to be taken out in the ocean by me. It was a great honor, but not one that makes one feel especially good.
After Susan passed away, on December 29, 2006, her family planned a beautiful memorial ceremony on the beach just behind our homes. When the last speaker, Donna Hicken, began her remarks, I (as instructed by the family) launched my kayak into the ocean. It was about 5:30 PM on January 28, 2006, and it was cold and windy, and getting dark. Her ashes were in a sealed plastic bag that was secured in a box, which was secured inside a backpack in the front of the kayak. I paddled out through the light surf, propelled by at least a 15 to 20 knot wind right out of the west, so on my back. About a mile or so from the beach, I opened the backpack, the box and the plastic bag, and scattered Susan’s ashes exactly where she wanted them to be. It was right in the middle of the location where she and Cass and I had been completely surrounded by the 40 dolphins not that long ago. I prayed for Susan all the way back to shore, a trip that took considerably longer than the outbound trip as the west wind (now directly in my face) picked up considerably and gusted even higher.
On a subsequent kayak trip not long afterwards, I passed the spot where I had spread Susan’s ashes, and a lone dolphin (they usually travel in pods) surfaced next to me, just for an instant, then disappeared beneath the surface.
(Susan Mehrlust R.I.P.)
