Free Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover's Soul by Jack Canfield

hospitalization for congestive heart failure.
    “I always thought you’d want your ashes to be spread at sea.”
    “Oh, no,” she said, a hint of a giggle in her eyes. “You know I can’t swim.”
    She had me laughing, breaking the somber mood that had overtaken me at the mention of cemeteries and ashes. I preferred to ignore the subject, but she was an undertaker’s daughter, practical about death. She wanted to be cremated. There would be no viewing, no funeral and no arguments. I wasn’t anxious to spend our Friday at a cemetery, but I couldn’t refuse my mother.
    “Where’s the cemetery?” I asked, resigned to a gruesome day.
    “Corona Del Mar,” she said. “Pacific View Memorial Park.”
    Of course, I thought. She was going to have her ocean view if it was the last thing she ever did.
    We met at Pacific View where the “counselor” showed us available niches. We narrowed it down to two locations in Palm Court, which resembled a giant stucco planter with marble-faced niches on all four sides and palms growing in the middle. It sat atop a hill with a panoramic view of the Pacific. That day the ocean sparkled azure blue, and Catalina Island rose up from the horizon.
    One niche faced the ocean, the other looked inland. But ocean view niches are more expensive than ones looking away from the sea. Her face fell when she learned this. She probably could have afforded the view niche, but it went against her practical grain. She regrouped and began to assess the virtues of the inland niche.
    “Look,” she said. “It’s right on the corner. You can sit here beside the niche and see the view when you visit me. I can just peek around the corner.” She was teasing me again, easing the tension. “Why should I plunk out all that money to be on the view side?”
    I could see she had made up her mind. She was buying the niche on the corner, without a view.
    Eighteen months later she died. My sister and I placed her ashes in the niche and watched the attendant secure the marble plate with mortar. We held onto each other, eyes straining through gray haze to see the ocean our mother had loved to watch.
    My Fridays were free, but I found myself at Pacific View often. Like my mother had instructed, I sat down facing the ocean. Sometimes I looked at the view, but mostly I closed my eyes and turned my head skyward. I’d see a kaleidoscope of red, yellow and orange swirls, pulling me inside the changing design and wrapping me up. It felt warm and sustaining, like a hug. When the colors subsided, I would leave, hardly glancing at the view.
    After a year I was still aching and empty, crying at odd moments. A college friend came to visit, and as a lark we went to a psychic. I was stunned when she said, “Someone has recently passed on. They are worried about you and can’t be free until they know you are all right.”
    Days later, at the niche, I thought about the psychic’s words. I normally took such pronouncements lightly, but I couldn’t shake this one. I sat at the niche, eyes closed as usual. I was edgy, though, and the colors faded almost as fast as they came. Hearing a bird’s call, I opened my eyes to see a gull circling above. I felt the words come before I said them, “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be fine.” As if in response, the gull dipped a wing, circled once more and flew off toward the ocean. My spirits lifting with the bird, I watched until it was out of sight. And there before me was that beautiful forever ocean view my mother had bought to share with me. I sat for a long time absorbing every part of it.
    Liz Zuercher

3
CELEBRATING
THE BOND
    O ne way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”
    Rachel Carson

Crab Lessons
    My son Geordi is a rather spirited boy. Very little holds his attention for long. He spends most of his spare time thinking up new ways to scare me half to death. Like the time he