Pilgrimage.

When you cremate someone and scatter their ashes, there isn't really a grave-site where you can go to reflect, mourn, or remember. The person becomes a part of the earth again. This is a nice thought, especially because then you know that the person you miss is all around you. They have become the earth you walk on and the air you breathe.
It's been 6 years since my mother died, and 6 years since we spread her ashes in her favorite places. In our little pet cemetery next to our house, into Emerald Bay in Lake Tahoe, off the coast of Santa Clara where she grew up. The place that had the most impact on me, though was the Golden Gate bridge. We drove down the coast until we came upon the fort directly underneath the bridge, where the icy waves crash up onto big black boulders and the cold water evaporates in the warm air into fog that blankets it. I sat on those boulders, my dad and sister behind me, and held the last remains of my gorgeous, wonderful mother in a plastic bag on my lap. I knew that this was what she wanted, she wanted to be given back. And as I opened the bag to the sea, the wind caught her and she seemed to become a part of the fog that wrapped around us.
I've been back to San Francisco several times since, but I never visited that place again until yesterday.
The Golden Gate Bridge is a gorgeous place. Millions of people probably see it every day, and it probably means something different and special to each one of them. To me, it's a reminder, a headstone, a tribute, and a place of pilgrimage. It is the memory of a spectacular person who could not have been delivered back to any place less beautiful.