Reef Deployment

 Last May I wrote about building Bob's memorial reef.

On July 17 it was lowered into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

I wasn't there.

We had fairly short notice.  On July 10 we were told "sometime next week".  On the 15th the notification was "it will be the 16th or 17th."  By the afternoon of the 15th the email said 7:00 a.m. on the 17th.

It was to be a family funeral of sorts.  We would all meet very early at Della and Don's at Mexico beach (it takes time to load and unload a boat and and get out to the site).  I realized that in order to get there on time I would have to leave by 4:30 in the morning.  I don't like driving at night, and much of the drive is through isolated areas where many deer would be feeding, so I planned on going down the evening before and spending the night there.  Amanda, Robert, and the kids would join us the next morning.

About an hour before I left, I got a call from Amanda.  Two of her lab partners were sick and being tested for Covid.  And one of Dane's co-workers had tested positive.  We talked for awhile, and admitted that she had to do the adult thing and keep the family at home.  So it would just be Della, Don, and myself.   I got out my suitcase.

Then realized I couldn't do it.

One of my co-workers was also out with a respiratory illness.  She gets one every year about this time, and while her Covid results hadn't been returned yet, her doctor was pretty certain it was a bacterial infection.

So I don't know if I used her illness as a reason or an excuse.  But I called Della and told her I wasn't coming.

The truth is that I realized I couldn't handle it.  I couldn't go out there, watch his memorial be winched down into the water, and then drive home alone to an empty house.  I hurt enough; I didn't have to beat myself up more.  And, for me, the pouring of the reef had been his funeral.  I didn't need a second one.

The deployment didn't go quite as planned.  The ship with the reefs got caught behind a coal barge that had grounded so was four hours late.  In that time a squall came up which knocked Don's boat around a lot, but fortunately cleared within an hour, and they watched the reef being deployed.

I felt calmer after that.  I didn't realize that I was stressing over something left undone, that another milestone had to be passed.  But wistful and sad.

The head of the artificial reef association (Bob Cox) had let me know that he would take pictures and videos of the deployment.  I did not know that he would edit and set to music a very lovely video of the reef in place. It was posted last week.

Of course I cried.  But the part that was uplifting, that actually gave me happiness, was the school of little fish that were dancing around it, claiming it as their new home.

A pyramid of cement and limestone rocks may not be everyone's idea of a memorial.  But I think of the graveyard scene from Phantom of the Opera:

"Passing bells, and sculpted angels

Cold and monumental

Seem for you the wrong companions

You were warm and gentle"

Yes, Bob was warm and gentle, and welcomed all life.  This is where he needed to be.