Threw my brother Pete's ashes into the ocean at Kennebunkport Beach, Maine, off the same rocks from which my father and mothers ashes were dispersed after their deaths in 1993 and 2012 respectively. I also spread some of them over a ball field in Ormrod, PA, where he both played baseball and was an umpire. The home field in Schnecksville, PA where he played as a catcher under the coaching of our father no longer exists. It was plowed under for renovations to the elementary school which we both attended. My parents moved to Sanford, Maine in 1977, where my maternal grandmother lived and which was the New England of their birth-she from Massachusetts and he from Rhode Island. Pete and his wife Linda and son Tim lived in Medford, Massachusetts for many years, and as families we all vacationed in Maine for many summers. Kennybunkport Beach was my mothers favorite, probably because it was less crowded and she could swim undisturbed by tourists.
Peter was a lifelong smoker so eventually succumbed to COPD, but he was able to see his beloved Phillies play in the 2022 World Series before he died, and he had a wonderful, joyous visit with his son and wife two days before passing in hospice. His somewhat autistic savant brain could recall baseball facts with remarkable detail, so that for instance, if you asked him who played shortstop in the 1969 world series he could tell you who and for what team and may even have remembered the scores and other trivia. I was not close to Pete in his later years, although when we did see one another we could pick up as though no time had passed. The unpredictable winter weather delayed the throwing of his ashes until May, and the mud like cloud in the picture is the slow return of a man's physical essence to the sea from whence we all have come.
