9 years ago today…

2 Comments » // April 29th, 2009

we spread my father’s ashes in the San Francisco Bay.  It’s actually illegal to do that, but we were able to charter a boat where the captain said he would “look the other way”.  My father lived in San Francisco for many years of his life, and next to Maui, it was his most favorite place in the world.   So before he passed he let his partner, Don, know that he wanted his ashed spread either in Maui or the bay…we chose the bay because we decided to have a celebration and it was easier for everyone to get to considering most of his friends still lived in the Bay Area.

The celebration was made up mostly of old friends of my father’s…the only real family was me…but his friends were his family.  I had actually never met several of his friends because when he lived in SF I was very young…so I was meeting some of them for the very first time after hearing amazing and hilarious stories about all of them.  There were also a few of his closest friends whom I knew very well from hanging out with them over the years.  We all met at a place called The Metro on the corner of Market and Castro, which unfortunately is not there anymore.  I loved that place!  It was a karaoke bar and a Chinese restaurant…some of the best Chinese food I had ever had as a matter of fact.  Anyway, when I got there with Don, I actually walked in a ahead of him while he parked the car…so I walked into the place and all of a sudden heard gasps and cries from a table on the side of the room.  I heard one of them say “Oh my God, if that isn’t Randy’s daughter…wow” or something to that effect.  Basically they all came up and gave me a big hug and everyone started crying.  These were all people I had never met, but they knew me instantly because I looked like my dad so much.  It killed me and I started crying too.

The celebration of my father’s life began there…with everyone buying me drinks so that I ended up getting drunk and singing karaoke all night for a bunch of gay men and lesbians…mostly Madonna and Bette songs….it was awesome.

The next day was the day we spread his ashes.  We got on the boat and took it out to an area just west of Yerba Buena Island and south of the Bay Bridge.  We each had a helium filled balloon that had a little card attached to it.  We all wrote in our little cards something to my dad or whatever we felt was important…we kept that to ourselves so I don’t know what other people wrote.  In fact, I don’t even remember what I wrote and it doesn’t even matter.  We then had a little sharing moment where we each said something about him.  There were about 30 of us on the boat and the stories were pretty incredible.

When it got to Don he ended up telling a few stories (he was my dad’s partner for 20 years), but the one I remember the most is the one about when i found out my father was gay.  He told how I had freaked out and was very confused.  You see, it was my mom who told me and my father wasn’t around (I was 12 and they had been divorced since I was a baby), although he had planned on telling me in person, a moment came along and my mom had to go with it and tell me then without him there.  Anyway, so I was very confused about the whole thing and ended up asking my mom if because my father was gay, did that mean I was gay too?  My mom’s response is Don’s favorite part of the story.  My mom replied to me, “well no honey, but if you are that’s ok too”.  Yeah, Don and I agree that my mom is the best mom ever.

So after sharing fun stories about my dad, Don and I took the bag of ashes and began to spread them out in the bay over the boat.  By the way, has anyone else ever spread ashes before?  Wow, it’s a little surreal.  My dad was 6’4″, so the bag was pretty damn heavy!  When my mom, my aunt and I spread my grandma’s ashes, it was a lot lighter.  As Don and I were spreading his ashes, everyone was releasing the balloons into the air and we released ours as soon as we were done.  Here comes the incredible part, which I have a picture of somewhere.  These balloons were all filled with helium.  But as they were being released, about half of them stayed on the water right over where my father’s ashes had just been spread.  They stayed like that for a very long time…like I don’t know how long because they were still like that 30 minutes later when  we left…yeah some went into the air and floated far, far away…but half hovered just above the water in this one spot.  It still gives me chills even thinking about it.  Maybe there is some sort of scientific explanation for it, but I don’t care…it was crazy.  I have pictures, but they are downstairs in my giant picture bin that is nagging at me to be organized…one of my many life projects that overwhelms me.

So yeah, that’s the story of the spreading of my father’s ashes in the Bay.  We had all talked about how we would come back every year and do a thing, but as you all know, life gets busy.  This is the first year that I have lived in the Bay Area during this anniversary…I almost drove over the bridge today to celebrate, but it’s not like I could have stopped…plus I think about him every single time I drive over it anyway.