Still, on a frigid February day, I had to let Mama go. Literally. Despite the near weightlessness of ash, my hands ached and shook as all that was left of her slipped through my fingers.

For as long as I can remember, Mama made no bones about how she wanted things handled. No keening obit in the paper, no tiresome wake, no fancy funeral. She insisted that she be cremated, her ashes spread in a no-fuss manner down at The Wharf. By me. Because I was the only one who’d know how to toss her out properly. Poor Father Delahanty was a terrible judge of wind and water. Just ask the family of old Tully Crumb.

“Handsome young devil, that Father Delahanty,” Mama would say, “but stunned as me arse. The service for old Tully Crumb down at Black Rock, he goes and chucks a scoopful of her ashes up into the air toward the water, and doesn’t the wind catch it. Ashes flying back into everybody’s eyes! One way to make people cry at your funeral, I guess. And knowing Tully, that was part of her plan all along. Getting in people’s faces like that, just to be a prick one last time. But Delahanty is not to lay a hand on my ashes. Got that?”

Standing on the wharf, my lime-green parka over a long black dress that just grazes the tops of my silver moon boots, I test the wind direction with a spit-moistened finger. I watch the rippling water, and the cruising clouds up above. I chuck the little scoop the funeral home gave me aside because I need to touch her one last time. To hold her as best I can. My cupped hand gingerly scoops some of her ashes out of the plain black urn, and my fingers curl around her, squeezing her tight. I kiss her through my white, blotchy knuckles. Whisper goodbye. Then, one slow, heavy handful at a time, I let her go into the invisible current that will carry her onto the Great Bras d’Or. I let Mama go in waves.

A volunteer emergency responder named Fricker pulled her body from the car after they towed it out of the icy bay’s depths. She was already dead, but Fricker didn’t waste any time getting her out and wrapped in a blanket. He didn’t let them put her in a body bag right away. He held her hand for a few moments, smoothed down her hair and closed her eyes. Mama would have appreciated that. She was always afraid that death would give her that freshly caught smelt look.

I can pick Fricker out of the crowd. I can’t make out his face from this distance, but there are slivers of translucent blue and solid green that reach and pull all around him. When I shift my gaze to the group that has now inexplicably gathered at The Wharf, a dancing dome of colours is all I see. Every now and then, an electric indigo or incandescent white spark flickers, flashes, dissolves in the crowd of old churchies who are here to pray for Mama’s soul, now that she’s gone. Because God knows they didn’t have a spare prayer for Scruffy Effie Fortune while she was alive. C’mere till I give you an eyeful of ashes, ya pack of pious bastards.