erm, Corinne, I really think you need to see this...

I’ll start this post with a warning.  If you find the subject of death upsetting or distasteful, then please don’t read on.

Anyway, are you sitting comfortably?  Then I’ll begin.

 

Picture a balmy, humid, flat calm and windless summer’s evening in July 1998.  My sister and I had convened on the banks of the infant River Tawe near its source, and at a place special to our family we simply call “Paradise”.

 

Our reason for being there was to scatter our late father’s ashes into the stream, finally laying him to rest.

 

As we opened the urn and began to scatter them, a stiff breeze blew up from seemingly nowhere, and from the north, completely opposite from the direction you would expect any wind at this spot.  The result was our father’s ashes instead of floating downstream, covering my sister and me.  They were in our hair, eyes, mouth; all over us.

 

We looked at each other and after the initial shock, cleared the dust from ourselves and just laughed.  This, we felt, was our great practical joker of a father’s final hoorah.  His last laugh, very firmly at our expense.

 

Fast forward almost sixteen years to the day, and we were back in the same spot with our mother’s ashes.  It was another calm, windless evening but this time we took no chances!  We kneeled closer to the water’s edge and quickly emptied the contents of the urn into the burbling river.

 

My sister then turned away saying something like “well, at least she’s gone without any incident”.  My reply was faltering in its tone.  “Erm, Corinne”, I said, “I really think you need to see this”.

it's still our special place

At our feet, on the water, our mother’s ashes hadn't floated away, but instead had coalesced into a ghostly white, anatomically perfect human form exactly that of our departed parent.  

We both stared open mouthed at the sight before us, which lingered for between thirty seconds and a minute before slowly un-forming and floating downstream.

 

We didn’t know what to feel.  Horror at the thought we’d witnessed something spectral or paranormal, or sadness at a last goodbye to our mum.

 

We still visit Paradise to this day.  It’s one of my favourite places to photograph or just relax, watch the dippers in the river and talk to my mum and dad.  And whenever my sister comes home to visit, we go there together and remember those two summer evenings!

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If you're still here, why not expunge any morbid thoughts you might now hold by watching my latest video.  It's all about my new tripod head, and not a mention of death in it at all!