Just once before I die I want to eat at that restaurant on the Isle of Skye a rocky domain of wonderous sea food just to dream one more time before you scatter my ashes  in our tiny zen garden full and fluttering with all my headscarves tied from fence and trellis.   So it happened that Sandra died on march 5th 2003.   We had had plans to live inTuscany. It was where she felt safe and at home. In her illness she avoided the hospitals and the eerie silences that surround people in intensive care with drips and machinery bleeping, working out just how much time you had to live. She became semi-comatose but she knew I was there with my son and daughter as her fingers wrapped strongly round my daughter's hand. I said in her ear, Darling just let go, please and go to rest.   I placed my hand on hers and I knew she was going but somehow her hands had a strength and her grip became tighter as she tried to hang on. She called me Jimmy, which as you know is not my real name. She pulled me down and somehow kissed my ear before letting forth four long slow gasps and then no more.   I had the instructions and what to do. She had said:   A cardboard coffin decorated with my granchildrens paintings and drawings. She chose the music. So let me sing her song tonight and let me feel out of sight and perhaps some will cry when you cast my ashes and promise some eyes will be dry.   Her departure affected a community, here where I live. There was a Scattering of Ashes ceremony   As we gather here today let us not forget the importance of ritual which helps bind us together and heal old hurts and wounds. We are today placing Sandra in our hearts and ensuring she is now finally at home in this little garden she created. To honour her memory we offer the gift of flowers symbolic of the blossoming of life and its inevitable impermanence and withering away. We offer the gift of incense in which the sweet smell of her good deeds may spread across the universe. We offer fruit in which all living beings may taste her goodness. We offer candles to light her on her way and to illuminate the darkness for all other beings.  May the good deeds and merits of our beloved Sandra, wife mum, nanny and friend ripen and come to fruition for the benefit of all living beings. May she dwell in a world of serenity and peace. May she hear us today and live within our hearts as long as she needs and as long as we need her to. By this she will not be forgotten. We here, her family, gather to transfer all our good thoughts and deeds and hers for the benefit of all that lives. ( Each member of family takes ashes and commence to scatter) As we scatter now her ashes in this peaceful garden may this transference commence. (speaker or other takes cup centre table and fills allowing it to run and continue to run over as the following is said) “As rivers brimmed with water fill the ocean, so charity practised here benefits the departed. As water fallen upon a hilly place flows down to the valley, so charity practised here benefits the departed�?/FONT> Sandra, you are home once more. You are as the dew upon a lotus. Let go now and mix with the elements……�?.The sun rises, the sun sets, the dewdrop slips into the shining sea. (water from container is splashed by hand by those present around the garden)   The words are ritualistic and everyone was in tears as her grandchildren spread her ashes around the garden. She had the funeral of her choice. Her passing gave me delayed shock and trauma.  I feel I have since moved on but shall not forget her!