**We all have a story. Whether that is through child loss, a bad day, or a triumph - we all have a story. I am so lucky to have been supported by so many amazing human beings throughout my journey. Some I knew from my life with Bennett, some I grew closer to because of Bennett and some who I have still yet to meet in person but their support and unconditional love still to this day are why I have survived. I am so delighted to share a piece written by a very dear friend of mine. She lost her precious son just 8 months after I lost Bennett. I think perspective is key throughout any situation. I am so grateful for her, her heart and her perspective - she is one of the main reasons I am where I am today and why I am able to share my journey and story.
I still remember the first time I sat in the sailboat. I had been eyeballing her for over a year; sideways glances whenever I walked past her on the dock. Classic-looking lines and a bone-dry cabin. She was floating inside the slip as I carefully stepped over the lines and into the cockpit. No small feat. I was six months pregnant at the time. The bench seats were wide and long. Plenty of room to stretch out and space enough for a baby and all the gear a tiny human requires.
We bought her that day.
I had visions of leisurely sails powered by gentle breezes. The three of us aboard with a picnic basket and nowhere to be. Fall camping trips anchored off at the end of Johnson’s Beach. Years’ worth of family time on a family boat. Our little boy would learn how to sail on it. With a family crew, we’d crush the competition in local regattas. We would pass the boat down to him once he was old enough to take care of it. I named her Bangerang after the Lost Boys’ war cry from the 1991 movie “Hook”. Why? I don’t know. At the time, it just sounded like a good boat name.
Only some of those visions came to pass.
Our baby Miles went for his first sail on Father’s Day. June 2018. He was less than two months old. Seth hoisted the Main and steered us through Bay la Launch and into Wolf Bay while I held Miles tight to my chest and still mushy, postpartum mom belly.
Miles napped in the cockpit as we sailed and won 2nd place in the Lost Bay Regatta with a couple of our friends (not exactly a “family” crew, but as close as it gets). October 2018. Six months old. I changed his diaper and outfit on top of an ice chest in the cabin before the awards ceremony on the yacht club’s covered porch.
A sunset sail one evening into Ingram’s Bayou. That bayou has always felt like a church to me. We gave Miles his middle name because of it. Ingram. All of us (our dogs included) were on board with that picnic basket full of snacks. The water was slick as glass, all wind blocked by the pines that shelter it. Bangerang and clouds were perfectly reflected on the water’s surface. Miles was awake and laughing, trying to chew on the portside wench. Then sitting in Seth’s lap, watching him and reaching for the worn, wooden tiller. It was our first sail of that year. Early January 2019. He was eight months old.
Little did we know that we would all return to that same spot in Ingram’s Bayou, carried by Bangerang, exactly one month later. But it would not be in the manner that Seth and I had imagined.
Brendan, silent and sitting in the stern of Bangerang, sailing Seth and I and our baby Miles’s ashes across Bay la Launch. February 2019. Miles would have been nine months old. Boats full of friends and family dotted the mouth of Ingram’s Bayou as the south wind carried us northward. My stomach flipping and my throat constricted. Blurred tunnel vision focused on the treeline ahead. Knuckles white as my fingers clutched the headstay, steadying me as I stood at the bow. The only sound registering in my ears was the flapping of the sail as it jibbed with the wind and loons calling as they bobbed in a flock off the bayou’s eastern shoreline. I remember their feathered chests looked like they were glowing gold in the late afternoon sunlight.
We reached the interior of Ingram’s Bayou. The wind stalled. It was time to act out our farewell. A gesture of goodbye...only it was just that. A gesture. No parent can ever truly say the final goodbye to their child. The basket I had brought on board was unexpectedly heavy, considering it held only camellia petals and blossoms. I gingerly took a handful of plant material, not fully closing my fist but making a kind of cage with my fingers so I didn’t crush the petals. Seth made a motion with his hand, a glint of silver in it. The urn. It was so small. It didn’t have to hold a lot. I reopened my hand. The one holding the petals. Seth poured some of our child’s remains on top of pinks, reds, and whites. Ash and flower in my palm.
Everything felt like a contradiction. My mind was numb, yet electrified. I wanted to block everything out but I also clung to every detail of every moment. It was all beautiful and simultaneously horrible. I wanted to be alone but was still grateful for everyone that gathered around us.
I mechanically lowered my hand below Bangerang’s topside. I leaned so far over, I risked falling in. I let petals, ash, (are those bits of bone?) slide from my hand into the dark green water. The same water Seth and I spent our youth marinating in. The petals afloat. Miles’s ashes sank like sand. I watched individual flecks drop out of sight. Over and over Seth and I did this until the basket emptied. Hundreds of petals spun and swirled in the wake and eddies of Bangerang’s hull as Brenden circled us through the bayou. I looked up to see our parents in the boats that trailed behind us. Brothers. My honorary grandparents. Charter boat Captains. Friends. All casting their own flowers into the bayou. No one spoke to us. Because what could anyone say? I focused on how solid Bangerang’s deck felt beneath my knees and hands. I didn’t feel like I’d ever be able to stand up again. There may have been thousands of petals floating in the bayou by that point.
Back out into the bay. A tiny sailboat with a bright red sail and painted, yellow heart tacks back and forth before Bangerang. A red letter M sits in the center of the heart. More flower petals floating and drifting in the bayou. The sound of someone blowing into a conch shell echos out to us. The smell of burning sage wafts to us from one of the boats anchored at the mouth of Ingram’s. I finally see people in all of the anchored boats. All of them are standing. I see their faces. The men holding their hats over their chests. No one is speaking. But I hear and feel their hearts’ intentions, I swear I do. I place my hand over my own heart in acknowledgment of everyone’s presence.
Lane said the wind switched a full 180 degrees as we sailed out of the bayou. The temperature dropped once it blew out of the north. She said birds took flight and dolphins surfaced. Shafts of sunlight sliced through gaps in the clouds. Goosebump inducing.
It was one of our final sails on Bangerang. The boat that would never become what I wanted her to be.
Yet I couldn’t let her go.
She sat tied in her slip; sometimes not moving for months at a time. She weathered two tropical storms. She somehow made it through a major hurricane even though the dock didn’t. She nearly sank one month when the float switch malfunctioned and the cabin filled up, shin-deep with rainwater. She simply sat tied to the remaining pilings with her halyard softly clanging against the mast. A sailboat that we had once made a priority, now neglected and tinged with our grief.
For me, though she would forever be shrouded with our sadness, she was still a reminder that we once had Miles. A sort of artifact from his short life with us in this world. Tangible proof that he had existed and we once had planned for his future. Bangerang served as a small comfort to me in this way. An object that I had a rare sentimental attachment to.
For Seth, this was not the case. It further emphasized something I had already known — that we all mourn in different ways. For him, going to check on Bangerang and the constant need for her maintenance was like a knife twisting in his side. A reminder of what would never be. A sailboat-shaped sign pointing to what we had lost. I had a full-blown meltdown the night he mentioned that we should sell her. I covered my face, ugly snot crying into a blanket. Clearly, I wasn’t ready to let go.
It took a while longer for me to come around to some realizations.
Holding on to Bangerang was not honoring Miles’s memory in any sort of way. Allowing a sailboat to slowly rot away in a slip isn’t a boon to anyone — living or ghost. It was a hard truth to swallow. I recognized that by holding onto Bangerang meant that I was holding on tighter to the memory of my baby than I was to my husband who was very much still physically there by my side.
It was then I forlornly agreed to sell her despite having said that I never would. Just another incident that taught me to make my words soft since I’d inevitably have to eat them later.
We had inquiries over the weeks. Seth continued to make repairs. I fielded questions about Bangerang’s rigging and sails; my answers were always terse. All of the people who asked about her just got on my nerves.
But then this one guy showed up to come to look at Bangerang. In his early twenties, he stood tall and looked confident. He made eye contact and had a respectable handshake. One leg and arm were covered with intricate tattoos. He had an energy about him that hinted of a life already lived more than most people twice his age. He showed up alone and admitted he had only just learned the basics of sailing. He paddled out to Bangerang on a stand-up paddleboard he had brought with him (no dock since the hurricane, remember?). He climbed up onto her deck. He and Seth spent over an hour on her. Seth pointed out every repair that would need to be made.
The guy made an offer. $4,444.00. His mother’s favorite number is four. Being a superstitious fellow, he wasn’t willing to make any other offer than this. It immediately endeared him to Seth and me even more. We accepted. I felt surprisingly at ease about it.
I later learned from Seth that the guy had recently gotten out of the military. He had been a diver, tasked with disarming underwater explosives. He now wanted to take time to become a more skilled sailor. He intended to rig out Bangerang to carry all of his freediving gear, surfboards, and paddleboards. Ultimately, he’d make his way around the Gulf Coast before heading down to the Caribbean. It all sounded impressive and romanticized to me. It made me feel good, actually, about handing Bangerang over to him.
It took me a few days after this guy’s offer to understand why I felt this way. I went from bawling over the mere thought of parting with Miles’s sailboat to being happy about allowing this buyer to sail away on her. And then it hit me.
This guy was a semblance of what I had once hoped Miles would grow up to be. A man who sought out adventure and explored his way through life. Someone who would see the beauty of land and sea and appreciate the slower, wilder places of the world. A man who would not only meet your gaze but hold it. And have calluses on his hands from work and play. A person who obviously held his family in high regard and was capable of facing an unknown future with optimism and enthusiasm. Someone who didn’t shy away from a challenge. In short, he reminded me a bit of Seth.
I never did paint Bangerang’s name on her hull. I have no idea if this guy will continue to call her that. I kind of hope so? But she now belongs to him and I’m okay with that. Even if he changes her name. The absence of Bangerang has not dimmed the memory of Miles. As illogical of a fear that that was, I know now that it never held water.
I wish fair winds and fortune to her and to her new Skipper. And take solace in the fact that new life and breeze will fill her sails.
-Jackie
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