2009 has started. Its only been a few days but it already seems like things might be looking up. Decisions made, outlook renewed, things to look forward to and whatnot. But aside from all this there's a clean slate feeling to this year. I ended last year smoothly and without incident with a mellow and quiet christmas in hawaii with my sister. The trip was almost offensively exspensive if i factor in meals and my lack of willpower when it comes to surfer chick fashion. But we finally did the last thing that needed to be done for our parents. We spread (dumped?) the rest of our mother's ashes at a quiet secluded beach behind a park in Haliewa on Oahu. But somehow in the last 3 years i had managed to get used to her being on the top shelf of my bookcase. Its not as if i ever truly thought that her ashes were her but rather what she once was. Her presence there symbolized the last step to my final acceptance with her being gone...and after papa died it was acceptance for both of them. So she's now in Hawaii. I have this image in my head of those moments...i gave my sister the container of ashes and she poured them gently into the water. We had chosen that particular beach entirely on accident but it was surprisingly perfect and the weather was being generous and giving us non windyness (blow back with parental remains was not something either of us wanted to deal with in therapy). I didnt know before a few weeks ago but human remains have a denser texture, more like sand than ashes. There were some slightly larger bone fragments, no bigger than a AA battery but big enough to notice. My sister reached down into the water and picked out one of the fragments. I will forever remember the odd feeling of watching my sister, the osteologist, holding a piece of my mothers bone in her fingers. She had a strange mixture of expressions on her face. Half slightly frustrated concentration as the anthropologist in her was trying to identify what she was holding exactly and half careful concern while the daughter in her was realizing that the bone in her hand was the last part of our mother she could tangibly touch. Then she bent back down and put it back in the water and my mother went out with the tide. It was how it needed to be.