Jim didn’t want a funeral, so he didn’t have one. He had an unexpected request instead. Or maybe not so unexpected given Jim’s love of the literary: He wanted to be cremated and his ashes scattered in the waters off Portuguese Bend, a remote area on the Palos Verdes Peninsula south of L.A. where one of Jim’s favorite authors, Joan Didion, lived with her family during the 1960s. Nate had been to the scenic spot a few times with Jim over the years, though never quite understood his father’s fascination with Didion, whose writing Nate found too stark and gloomy. Jim would say Nate was missing the point, to which Nate would ask “What is the point?”
So a week after Jim’s death, Nate and Cody, his lovably galumphing, six-year-old Shepherd Lab mix, piled into Nate’s Chevy Silverado (“Nathaniel Cronin—Landscape Design” graced its driver’s side door panel), and drove down to Portuguese Bend, the classic rock of Jim’s Central California youth blaring in memoriam from the truck’s Bose sound system. Nate grew up listening to the Stones, the Steve Miller Band, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Bruce Springsteen, and all his dad’s other favorites, making these “moldy oldies,” as he’d jokingly call them, his own as part of their many bonding rituals. It was easier than reading Joan Didion—or even Fitzgerald, for that matter.
Nate sang along, that appropriately overcast summer morning, to “My Old School” and “Second Hand News” and “Rosalita” as he and Cody wound their way down Pacific Coast Highway past Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach, then swung into more upscale Palos Verdes. When Nate saw the sign for Inspiration Point, an iconic hiking spot with awesome views of the Pacific, he knew Portuguese Bend wasn’t far behind—and there it was. He parked on the grassy bluffs above the rustic beach and leaned across the passenger seat to open the door for Cody, who leaped out and instantly peed on a patch of weeds. Nate reached beneath his seat, grabbed the small bronze urn that held Jim’s ashes, and joined Cody, who was now urgently sniffing at a thicket of Pride of Madeira. He was clearly not the only dog who’d staked its claim up there lately.
Jim’s doctor had lied. Nate’s dad lived beyond the “month, maybe two” that had been predicted. By two weeks and three days. Hardly an eternity but precious bonus time to help Nate settle into the crushing blow that was on its inevitable way. Jim managed to finish the semester just as the exhaustion and pain began to overtake him. He spent his last month laying low on Escarpa Drive, rereading old books, smoking dope and popping edibles (not always for medicinal purposes), and saying his goodbyes to friends, students, and colleagues. Nate spent as much time at Jim’s as he could, sleeping over with Cody as needed until a hospice nurse had to step in. Jim stayed mostly upbeat, more for Nate than for himself, even if the wistful resignation in his ever-weakening voice was hard to miss. It was sad and profound and strangely civilized, and Nate held his father’s surprisingly warm hand when he finally slipped away.
Portuguese Bend Beach was thankfully empty that Sunday morning. Maybe the clouds were keeping folks away or maybe it was just the early hour—it was barely nine—but it gave Nate a wider berth to scatter Jim’s ashes into the choppy ocean. Though he had gotten a permit to do so—Jim had looked into that in plenty of time—Nate didn’t want weird looks or hassles from any proprietary locals. “It’s so crazy,” Nate noted during one of his many marathon talks with his dad those last two months, “it’s not illegal to take a dump off the coast but a little ash is some kind of federal offense!” Jim laughed, as much at the irony of the statement as the fact that, of the two of them, Nate was the one more prone to play by the rules. Maybe the kid was loosening up in his “old age.”
Nate had played this scene over in his mind many times, but it felt different once he was standing at the edge of the Pacific, about to fling a gob of his father’s ashes into the hissing cobalt waves. He had thought about what he’d say before letting go of those eerily finite remains, imagining something that was not quite a prayer—think: more literary than liturgical—yet had its own sort of eternal gravity. Still, when the time came, words escaped Nate. So he relied instead on memories of his dad, a kind of greatest hits-worth of images from Nate’s childhood to last week, as the ashes swirled and flew through the salty breeze. Cody romped and barked as Nate threw handfuls of dust out to sea until the urn was as empty as Nate’s heart.
Nate felt exhausted, as if he’d just raced from one end of the beach to the other. He sat down on the rocky sand—it was more like sandy rock—Cody panting at his side, and gazed out at the horizon, envisioning the slow and steady voyage of Jim’s remains. As if on cue, the sun peeked out from behind the clouds and reflected against the waves. Nate lifted his face to the sky, closed his eyes, and took in the emerging warmth. He hoped his dad would have approved of that morning’s ritual; it was, after all, his idea. “At least you’ll know where to find me,” Jim had told Nate, with a sly smile, after choosing Portuguese Bend for his seaside sendoff. It was a far more comforting thought now than it was at the time.
That night, Nate downloaded a copy of Joan Didion’s Blue Nights and stayed up till three—while Cody sawed logs beside him—reading about Didion’s days as a resident of Portuguese Bend. He finally understood what his dad saw in the iconic author.