Memorial bench – Cantwell's Reef

“Our” seal watched fearlessly as Lillian and I ventured near on the rocks below Barbara’s memorial bench.

BARBARA JUST MIGHT BE A SELKIE NOW, it seems.

If you’re not an avid fan of the delightful 1994 John Sayles movie, “The Secret of Roan Inish” (in which a selkie is part of the secret), you might need this Wikipedia definition: “Selkies are mythological creatures that can shapeshift between seal and human forms by removing or putting on their seal skin. They feature prominently in the oral traditions and mythology of various cultures, especially those of Celtic and Norse origin.” “Roan Inish” is a real island on the Ulster coast of Ireland.

Daughter Lillian and I just returned from our annual overnight pilgrimage to remote Sucia Island, a marine state park that’s home to the park bench memorializing Barbara, my wife and Lil’s mother, who died of breast cancer in 2021. Three years ago, we cast her ashes in waters near this island.

Barbara aboard WeLike shortly after we retired to Center Island.

The bench, a GoFundMe project funded by generous donations by many of you Reef readers, sits in one of the most beautiful spots in the San Juan Islands, with a stunning waterfront panorama that takes in Orcas, Waldron and Patos islands in the San Juans, along with Boundary Pass (the Canadian border) and a handful of Canada’s Gulf Islands. Eagles soar, kayakers skim the waves, sailboats ride the breeze on wide, wild waters, and seals bob in the sea.

As always, getting there was an ambitious 90-minute saltwater voyage aboard WeLike, my restored 1957 Skagit Express Cruiser, the 20-footer built in nearby La Conner, Skagit County. WeLike’s cuddy cabin includes a cozy V-berth just big enough for a father and daughter in a couple of sleeping bags.

After departing Center Island in a warm summer-morning rain, Lillian and I docked at Sucia’s Fossil Bay on a pleasant, partly sunny afternoon scattered with puffball clouds. We immediately gathered a sack lunch and set out on a mile-long hike through tall cedars and swordfern grottos to the southerly point at the entrance to Shallow Bay.

There we found the bench in excellent shape. We always bring a scrub brush, spray cleaner and paper towels for an annual cleaning, but the cedar-colored planks of durable recycled plastic needed only a quick wipe. The bronze plaque — which I personally affixed three years ago with wood screws and plenty of epoxy — remained, unmarred: “For Barbara, who loved this island, from Brian, who always sat beside her.”

Lillian offers a toast to her mother as we lunch at the memorial bench on Sucia Island. Boats ride moorings on Shallow Bay behind her.

As we munched our lunch, Lillian and I saw a harbor seal bobbing in the water and looking up at us from just beneath our shoreline perch. The emerald-green water was so clear here we could see the seal’s entire body beneath the surface. Remarkably, the seal stayed there, riding the incoming swell, as we finished our lunch and began to read aloud from one of Barbara’s favorite authors. We continued where we left off in last year’s novel, “The Last Camel Died at Noon,” an Amelia Peabody mystery by Elizabeth Peters.

Your faithful scribe among Sucia tidepools.

As Amelia, husband Emerson and son Ramses traveled down the Nile on a mysterious quest, we watched the seal clamber out of the water and on to a rock so near that we easily looked each other in the eye. Kayakers paddled near, motorboats buzzed by, and our friend the seal stayed put. When Lillian and I walked down to a small rocky point beneath the bench’s promontory, the seal followed us with her eyes but never fled back into the water.

Barbara?

Back at the dock, we chatted with other boaters. One friendly fellow on a C Dory heard our story and asked, “Oh, are you talking about Barbara’s bench? I was there yesterday! Wait, what’s your name?” “I’m Brian,” I told him. Another dock neighbor made plans to visit Barbara’s bench the next morning.

It’s sweet to know that other visitors are enjoying that resting spot with the million-dollar view. It was what dear Barbara wanted.

I hope they saw the seal.

Glassy waters reflect a pleasant morning at Sucia Island’s Fossil Bay. My family and I brought our sailboat to Sucia every summer for decades. Three years ago we cast Barbara’s ashes on nearby waters.

Toasting Barbara from her memorial bench, looking toward Boundary Pass in the Salish Sea and Saturna, left, and Patos islands.

WHAT ELSE CAN I SAY? Barbara sends her love.

That’s the first thought that comes to mind after returning yesterday from my second annual pilgrimage to Sucia Island to visit the park bench memorializing my late wife, who died of breast cancer in 2021. In 2022, state parks workers erected the bench, commanding what might be the most beautiful saltwater view in the San Juans, with the help of a GoFundMe project to which many of you generous readers contributed.

Daughter Lillian accompanied me this time for a cozy overnight in sleeping bags aboard WeLike, my restored 1957 Skagit Express Cruiser, a dazzling study in mid-20th-century turquoise, snugly tied to a dock in Fossil Bay.

My 1957 Skagit Express Cruiser, *WeLike.*

We arrived on Labor Day afternoon, just as many other boaters were heading home from their holiday weekend. After a bone-jarring ride through tidal turbulence encircling Orcas Island and hazardous wakes from giant motor yachts hell-bent for their home ports, we were thankful to find plentiful dock space at Sucia, our favorite marine state park, the blissful destination of countless voyages over past decades aboard our sweet old sailboat, Sogni d’Oro.

For the easy moorage this visit, we thanked Barbara, whose ashes we scattered on the waters here two years ago. She makes things happen here, we’re sure of it.

Your correspondent at Barbara’s bench, with Shallow Bay in the background.

We immediately packed snacks and a surreptitious bottle of Barbara’s favorite sauvignon blanc, setting out for the mile hike through deeply shaded woods of cedar and autumn-gold maples to her bench at the south peninsula forming soporific Shallow Bay.

The bench sits high on a bank above some of Sucia’s characteristic shoreline of wildly sculpted sandstone, like something Antoni Gaudi might have fashioned had he won the commission rather than the Northwest winds and tides. From a seat on the bench, a swivel of the head takes in a stunning panorama including Orcas, Waldron, Stuart and Patos islands of the San Juans, and Canada’s Saturna and Pender islands.

After a day of low-scudding clouds that sprinkled raindrops along our way, Barbara now cleared the sky to match the blue of her eyes that had bewitched me from age 16. If the weather had been perfect from the start and seas smooth, we’d never have found room at the dock, Lillian and I professed. “Mum watches out for us,” we agreed.

On the park bench memorializing her mother, daughter Lillian reads aloud from one of Barbara’s favorite mystery authors.

Though the birds had largely spared it as a target, we gave the bench its annual swabbing with cedar-sage spray cleaner, a scrub brush and paper towels. The bronze plaque remained clearly legible: “For Barbara, who loved this island, from Brian, who always sat beside her.”

Perched comfortably, my daughter and I munched on apple slices dipped in peanut butter, sipped a tart and fresh New Zealand wine from colorful metal tumblers off the boat, and took turns reading aloud from one of Barbara’s favorite mystery authors, Elizabeth Peters. “The Last Camel Died at Noon” featured the adventures of Egyptologist Amelia Peabody and her professorial husband, Radcliffe Emerson.

Lillian at the stone gateway to the madrona forest on Sucia Island.

After hiking back on an alternate route through a marvelous madrona forest, we returned in the morning with a vacuum jug of coffee and a small campstove. Cloudy skies cleared to golden sunshine just as we arrived at the magic bench. Over the stove’s flame, we made toast that we smeared with ripe avocado. More Amelia readings. More quiet communing with our beloved wife and mother.

“I miss her,” I told Lillian. “I do, too,” responded our daughter, who turns 33 this month. “She knew how to make things perfect.”

A spare paper towel had to suffice for the Kleenex I forgot to pack.

Much has changed in our lives and continues to change. My ability to fall in love has sputtered back to life, with emotional twists and turns. Lillian and partner Chris are soon to move to Philadelphia, as he takes a new job as a flight attendant. Lillian, the baker, hopes to become Lillian, the book editor. Along the way, they will enjoy free flights all over the world.

But come what may, our love for Barbara will never change. We think of her often. And at least once a year, at least one of us will return to commune with her on her enchanted island.