Page 105 of Wilder Love
There were times throughout the night when he was lucid. We held his hand. We tried to decipher his garbled words.
Sea… love… son… Zoe…
“He’s telling us he wants us to be happy,” Remy said. “He wants you to be happy.”
“I’m happy,” I said. “You were the best father any guy could ever ask for. I hope you know that. I hope you know how much I love you.”
And I thought he heard me and understood. I thought I saw him smile. I wasn’t sure, but that was what I needed to believe.
Jimmy Wilder passed away peacefully at six twenty in the morning on the first of October. Three weeks before the anniversary of my mom’s death. Silent tears streamed down Remy’s face and Sam’s eyes were red-rimmed from crying.
My eyes were dry, my heart heavy as we headed back to shore.
42
Shane
Over a hundred surfers gathered on the beach for my dad’s paddle-out, and I spotted Miguel hanging back on the fringes of the group. Dude was built like the Incredible Hulk so blending in wasn’t an option. It was the first time I’d seen him away from a demolition site. Instead of dusty work clothes and a hardhat, he was sporting a gray button-down shirt and slacks, his dark hair slicked back with styling products.
“I came to your church,” Miguel said when I made my way over to him to shake his hand with Remy in tow. “Not to surf. But to pay my respects.”
“Thank you. That means a lot to me,” I said sincerely. It was two in the afternoon on a Friday which meant he’d taken off work to be here. “This is Remy. Remy. Miguel. We used to work together.”
“I remember,” Remy said.
I winced, reminded of the time I’d given Miguel the lunch that Remy had brought for me. He’d taken one look inside the bag, scrunched up his nose at the salad containers and passed it back to me. I’d ended up eating the lunch, but she never knew that because I never told her. I was still in my asshole phase.
“Thank you for coming,” she told Miguel, gracing him with one of her genuine smiles. It was blinding. Miguel looked a little star-struck for a minute. Couldn’t blame him. Remy’s wetsuit fits like a glove, hugging every curve of her body. Curves I loved that she didn’t have when she first came back to Costa del Rey. Wild jet-black waves of hair fell down her back and around her shoulders, framing her perfect face.
“It’s my pleasure,” Miguel said, pulling himself together.
We moved on to the others gathered on the beach and I shook hands and clapped shoulders, fist-bumped a few old friends and thanked everyone for being there. Then I gave the nod and we all paddled out together, slipping under the waves and over the choppy water, orchid stems clenched in our teeth and leis around our necks. The orchids and leis were Remy’s contribution and I was pretty sure she’d wiped out the entire stock of orchids on the west coast or Hawaii or wherever she’d ordered them from.
It took a while for so many of us to get into the right position, but eventually, we formed a wide circle in the calmer water out beyond the breakers. I sat up on my board—my dad’s favorite orange longboard—and looked around at the circle of surfers. Remy was right beside me just like she had been since the day my dad died. Before that, even. She wasn’t a quitter, and she hadn’t given up on me even when I’d given up on myself. Dylan was on her other side. We were besties now. Not really. Dude barely spoke. But over the past two weeks, we’d been hanging out together. I guess I hadn’t realized how close he and my dad had gotten while I’d been in prison. For Dylan and Remy, my dad had been the only real father figure in their lives and his death had hit them hard. During the first week after my dad died, Remy cried a lot. I’d find her in the vegetable garden, pulling weeds and crying. Making a salad, butchering an avocado, and crying. When I took the knife out of her hand and told her she was going to lose a finger if she kept it up, that made her cry harder. Last week, she threw herself into a project and yesterday she presented me with a photo album that brought tears to my eyes. She’d enlisted Sam’s help and he’d dug up photos from forty years ago, thirty years, twenty, and her own photos up until the day he died. There wasn’t a single photo in that album where my dad wasn’t smiling or laughing.
Travis was on my other side, his brother Ryan, Cody, and Oz and Sam in the circle. A few silver surfers who had a good twenty years on my dad, and the locals who surfed this break every day.
We were all out here to celebrate Jimmy Wilder’s life. A paddle-out is a beautiful Hawaiian tradition, and I couldn’t imagine a better way to honor a surfer’s memory. A better way to honor my dad’s life, a man whose passion for the ocean had lasted for all of his fifty years.
Over the past two weeks, I’d made peace with my dad’s passing. I missed him like hell and I always would, just like I still missed my mom after all these years. But a few weeks before he died, he told me he had no regrets and I took solace in that.
“I’ve lived a good life.I’ve loved, and I’ve been loved. What more could a man want?”
What more indeed.
I turned my head to look at Remy and her eyes locked on mine. For a few seconds, it was just the two of us out here, sharing an intimate moment. She gave me one of her beautiful smiles, and it made my heart ache. The afternoon sun lit up her face and her aquamarine eyes rivaled the blue of the ocean. But it was her strength and her courage and her indomitable spirit that shone the brightest. “Are you ready to say goodbye, Firefly?”
She shook her head. “This isn’t goodbye. He still lives on. In the ocean. In here,” she touched her heart and then placed her palm over mine. “And here.”
I clasped her hand in mine and brought it to my lips, placing a kiss on it. Then I released her hand and the ceremony began.
With a patrol boat in the distance shooting water from a canon and spectators watching from the beach, we threw our sunset-colored petals into the sea and splashed water.
Hands joined, we raised our arms above our heads, whistling and howling. After a while, I led a roaring chant that seemed to echo off the bluffs:Jimmy. Jimmy. Jimmy.
It was loud, and it was joyful. For a few minutes, out here on the ocean, a place I’d always considered to be my home, there was no anger or bitterness or sadness or pain. Only love.
We pointed our boards toward the sky and beat on them like drums.
