While I was in Memphis last week I got to spend some time with my dad’s brother, Bud.  He was wearing an 8th Air Force ball cap so I asked him to tell us about his service.  From his enthusiastic telling of “war stories”  it seemed clear that the time he spent on those B-17s were among the best years of his life.  He told me about training to be a pilot, eventually washing out, and then being sent to gunnery school.  Which is how he wound up being the belly gunner on the B-17, which he called the best damn plane every built.

I can’t imagine the courage these guys had to have. 

This is not Uncle Bud’s plane, unfortunately I don’t have a picture of his.

My dad, Walter Lee McCrarey, grew up in Memphis.  My grandfather was a riverboat captain, and like him, my dad loved the Mississippi.  Dad also spent most of his adult life sailing the oceans of the world with the U.S. Merchant Marine.  In fact, he first went to sea at the age of 15 in 1942 serving on the freighters carrying precious war cargo to the UK.

Dad wasn’t a particularly religious man, nor did he have much sentimentality regarding his mortal remains.  Many times he reminded us that it wouldn’t make a whit of difference to him if we threw his dead body on the curb when he gone.  Instead, we donated his body to the University of South Carolina Medical School in accordance with his wishes.  When the medical students were done with him, he was cremated and the ashes were returned to the family.

Well, I was mindful of the fact that he didn’t want any big deal made of his remains, but I nevertheless had a box of “cremains” staying in my house and I wasn’t satisfied with that arrangement.  In consultation with my brothers, it was decided to place some of the ashes at mom’s grave site (she was sentimental that way) and the rest would be deposited in the Mississippi river where they would eventually make their way to sea, just as he had so many years ago.  And so that’s just what we did.

Dad (standing, 3rd from left) with some of his buddies on a fishing expedition.  I’d like to imagine it was near the same spot on the river where we deposited his ashes.

Dad in his early days with the Merchant Marine.

In his later years at sea he was still keeping those big engines turning…

And he never lost his love for the open sea.

Brother Keith carrying dad’s remains to the riverside.

This is the spot we picked to say our final goodbyes.

Keith recited one of dad’s favorite poems:

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over. 

–John Masefield

And then we poured him into the muddy waters of the Mississippi river.

So we said our goodbyes in the best way we knew how.  And then we went on with the business of living.

Time, flowing like a river…

Time, beckoning me
Who knows when we shall meet again
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river
To the sea

Goodbye my love,
Maybe for forever
Goodbye my love,
The tide waits for me
Who knows when we shall meet again
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea, to the sea

Till it’s gone forever
Gone forever
Gone forevermore

Goodbye my friends,
Maybe forever
Goodbye my friends,
The stars wait for me
Who knows where we shall meet again
If ever
But time
Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea, to the sea

Till it’s gone forever
Gone forever
Gone forevermore