Scattered to the winds
March 17, 2000

Despite Dino's reminder on the phone the night before as we made final plans, when it was time to interrupt the process of decorating the community center for the memorial service, and solve the logistics of getting three participants and two witnesses to the airport in two cars (and also stopping at the passenger terminal to pick up a guest arriving from Denver whose face was known to no one) -- amid all this confusion we almost forgot to swing by the house and pick up Jill.

Or her remains, some purists would insist we say, although everyone continued to refer to the oiled cherry box as "Jill", as when silver-tongued Dino said just before we boarded, "Are you ready to go dump Jill?" Once aboard, drawing from the experience gained on two or three previous experiences, he gave me detailed instructions. I was relieved to see that the ashes were already in a plastic bag with a twist tie, because I couldn't envision how I would hold a wooden box out the window of an airplane moving over a hundred miles an hour and somehow remove the lid to release the contents without also dropping the box. Dino's wife Linda added a potted shamrock to the contents, then retied the bag and returned it to its box. Then we boarded: Jill's 16-year-old niece Jessica and sister Sherry in back (not a fan of the roller coaster effect of riding in a small plane, she felt she owed it to Jill to go along); Dino and I, of course in front.

There were three key steps to the scattering procedure. I would sit on the left, which was normally the pilot's side of this dual-control airplane, a single engine Cessna that Dino borrowed for the occasion because it was fitted with a special window designed to fold up against the overhead wing and remain open in flight (a feature useful for aerial photography). After removing anything that might blow off my body, such as headset and sunglasses, I was to unlatch the window and carefully let it fold up against the wing. Then I would remove the bag from the box, squeeze the neck firmly and remove the tie. Finally, I would hold the bag in two hands, lean out the window and hold it as low and far back as I could reach before releasing the neck, in order to avoid having ashes blast back into the cockpit.

Dino's flight plan included the two major landmarks that another pilot had visited when taking Jill on her last flight. After takeoff around 12:45 on the sunny afternoon of St. Patrick's Day, we headed up the coast then inland and north to Lompoc. After takeoff I tried to follow the complicated process of aviation: watching the instruments, matching the lines on the GPS video screen embedded in the control yoke with those on a chart of the area, reading the radio frequencies from a handbook for Dino to dial in to contact air control and tower for Santa Barbara and Lompoc, and, most difficult of all, trying to "make visual contact with" (i.e., to see the damn things) as air control advised "Cessna 664" (us) of an "experimental" that was doing aerobatics over the beach or a "Piper" ahead of us on the same course, which was nearly invisible from the rear. Being a pilot doesn't leave you much time to enjoy the scenery.

Because of its location against hills on the southeastern edge of Lompoc, we easily found our first landmark, Jill's house. We spiralled downward over the, reminiscing about the 1966 Dodge Charger in the driveway, which Jill was given at age 16 and drove for 27 years, and which Dino, a former Glendale mechanic, serviced for many years. (Sadly, it has been anchored in its current location for 6 or 7 years, but the person to whom Jill willed it promised to give it a loving home.)

The lighthouse at Point Conception was our second destination. A direct course would have taken us through the restricted airspace of Vandenberg Air Force base, so we had to retrace our course near Highway 1 to Gaviota Pass, then continue up the coast. When the lighthouse came into view, Dino cut speed as much as possible, circled once to give us a good view of the resting spot where we were releasing Jill's mortal remains, then told me to proceed.

My heart began to pound and I shuddered a bit as I began the mentally rehearsed steps. When I removed the headset, I was surprised at the roar of the wind even before I carefully raised the window. As I removed the bag from the box and squeezed the neck, Dino gave me an extra tip to grasp the bottom of the bag tightly with my right hand to avoid releasing the bag entirely. I shakily uttered a few rehearsed words, "Jill, you have earned your wings, now take to the air!," clenched the bottom of the bag and was startled when my thumb punctured the unexpectedly brittle plastic. This released a quick spurt of ash in my lap, so I hurriedly thrust the bag out the window, aimed low and released. The ashes released quicker than I could watch, and a last little gust followed when I shook the bag. Although I didn't notice it at the time, my elbow apparently banged against the fuselage, because I now have a bruise and two scratches. Mostly, I was aware only of the the clump of potting mix as it dropped in seeming slow-motion toward the water, finally out of sight.

After I forced the window back down and latched it, I saw, as I knew and as Dino had feared, a bit of ash had scattered around the cockpit. My black pants were speckled, as were the headset and a few of the instruments in my area. But not too bad, considering what the accidental puncture could have meant. The flight back down the coast was exceptionally turbulent, the plane yawing side to side on occasion, while dropping hard enough on occasion to demonstrate the value of seatbelts. I glanced back at Sherry and Jessica and they looked, dare I say, "ashen"? Jessica later said that she closed her eyes and pretended she was riding the Indiana Jones ride; Sherry, feeling progressively ill, gritted her teeth and told herself that Jill had somehow arranged for extra turbulence to test her mettle. They both mentioned that they had been peppered with ash and had "tasted Jill." After we landed, Sherry produced a miniscule bone fragment from her clothing. A bit of fine powder remains in the plastic bag, which Sherry says she will take in the box back to Hawaii, where she will rinse it in the water near a lighthouse, so that the ash and dust of Jill's human period will span the ocean.