THE MISSISSIPPI RIPS A BROWN GASH RIGHT THROUGH the guts of the city. It smells of mud and crawfish, bottom-feeders and trash, and centuries of life thriving along its banks. We’ve found a rocky bank with a view of the bridge and picked a bright and clear afternoon. Daniel squeezes my hand for encouragement. To my left, Gary clears his throat.

“Did you want to say something?” he asks, trying hard to conceal how awkward he feels.

I take a deep breath and clutch her box to my chest. This is not how I pictured it happening. But then, nothing about the last several months has been how I pictured it. Isn’t all of life that way? Somehow different than we imagine. Sometimes better. Sometimes worse. I feel the rightness of it under my breastbone and between my lungs.

I open the top and pull out the plastic bag, unknotting it. “I love you, Moony,” I tell her, using both hands to hold the bag as I upturn it into the water. “You’ll always be mine.”

I hope she knows that I have chosen the Mississippi not because it is in the city, but because it will carry her away. I hope so, but I don’t say it.

I hope she knows I decided against spreading her in her small town not because I couldn’t bring myself to set foot there again, though I couldn’t, but because I can’t imagine her finding rest there with all that happened. I hope so, but I don’t say it.

I don’t say most of what I’m thinking because Moony doesn’t need me to tell her story. She lived it. And this part—the part where I spread her ashes and finally let her go—is not the end of her story, but a piece of mine.

Who Moony was to me and who she was to my mother is a lot like this city. Some look at New Orleans and see life and art and joy and beauty. Others see crime and poverty and waste and corruption. One erodes the foundation even as the other builds anew on top of it. I am willing to see both versions of New Orleans. I am willing to hear its whole story.

I used to see myself like these muddy waters—all wavering lines and washed-out color, a flood of potential where nothing ever really takes full shape. But now, when I pass my reflection in the thick glass of an old window, I see a girl of flesh and bone, soft skin laid over hard lines, pink and gold and the rich brown of tree bark. I see the rough brick and cold iron of the city, forging itself to my form, building me up, making me strong.