Death does us part

Don's niece Molly, center. Don's aunts "Puggy" (Mary Dorman) and "Sister" (Lillian Whiting) on the right with their brother, Don's Pop.

After a while I called the Mountain View Mortuary on Fair Oaks at Woodbury. They came and carried away Don's body in their station wagon, driving east along Gravelia as the dusk darkened. I watched as it passed beneath the big old oak by the corner house, and as it turned right on Canyon Crest Road to start down the hill.

On Tuesday I helped push Don's body into the crematorium oven, and then I sat on the graveyard lawn re-reading The Prophet while for six hours his vapors streamed rippling up from the chimney into the marine layer.

On July 24 we motored off the coast of Oxnard to scatter his ashes in the Santa Catalina Channel. Just before releasing them, we transferred some to a little soapstone vessel for Nancy to take and bury in the family plot in North Carolina.

I read aloud some excerpts from the little book that has always been prominent on our bookshelf:

And (Almitra) hailed him, saying: Long have you searched the distances for your ship. And now your ship has come, and you must needs go. Deep is your longing for the land of your memories and the dwelling place of your greater desires; and our love would not bind you nor our needs hold you... He saw the pilot of his ship standing by the helm and gazing now at the full sails and now at the distance. And he said: Patient, over patient, is the captain of my ship. The wind blows, and restless are the sails; Even the rudder begs direction... I am ready. The stream has reached the sea, and once more the great mother holds her son against her breast. Fare you well... This day has ended.

-- The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

From left to right are my sister Mary Kay, Christopher and Dick Draney, Bill's parents Bill and Lois Coleman (Bill had come to the marina too, but he suddenly became too ill to take part in Don's last boat ride, and he never recovered), Ramon, whose partner Brian Terry (Don's physician and ophthalmologist) is behind the lens taking the picture, Don's sister Nancy Whiting Glover, Mitch Scaff and me.

Then I asked Nancy, "shall we commit Donald's ashes to the sea?" She sobbed, "Yes.", and we did, and then we each threw in a rose.

It was barely two months from then until AIDS also claimed Bill's life. He had been in good health while attending to Donald in his battle with it. Once he was lost, Bill's health deteriorated rapidly until September 25 when I was called to St. Luke's Hospital before dawn. Driving toward Orion blazing in the east, I arrived to be with him while he slipped away, minutes after he assured me he was feeling comfortable. I think he subscribed to at least that part of his family's religion that promises being reunited with loved ones after death.

We repeated the scattering at sea for Bill's ashes in October.

Donald was always buying and caring for plants, from the time we had our first apartment until he was on his deathbed. He executed small but beautiful patio gardens at our Fairfield condo. We carried a few house plants from there aboard Almitra. He created larger, beautiful gardens once we settled into the house we rented in the Altadena Meadows.

This is an image of the last plant Donald ever bought and tended. It's just a little dracena, one that he ordered by phone from the Shopping Channel on cable TV, while he was at home in bed in the final phase of his illness. When it arrived, he was disappointed that it was so small. The little plant has been loving life for over a decade since then, and I've re-potted it a couple of times.

The plant sits outside in the garden under the big oak tree -- the oak mentioned above -- on the property I bought in the Altadena Meadows in 1998. This is the old oak that reaches across Gravelia street near the corner.

On his birthday December 26, 1987, Donald, who is clearly affected by the death of my mother, has readied Nosotros and taken her to the dock. He sees me, my father, and my sister aboard, and pilots us out into the Santa Catalina Channel where scatter Catherine's ashes in the brilliant sun. Don had been close to my mother, and he was instrumental, really the motivating source, for my own reconciliation with my parents, whom I would otherwise have kept at too great a distance over the years.