Mermaid Dreams

My sweet daughter I picture you playing amongst the mermaids, wearing a necklace of sea-shells and white shiny pearls. You loved the ocean and even on your worse days when the cancer had taken away all your energy you would have us carry you down to the sandy beach. You would sit watching the high tides bouncing waves on the shore. I often wondered what you thought about as you sat there. One day you turned to me and said, "Wouldn’t it be great to be a mermaid?" Memories of you as a small girl reading the Little Mermaid stories brought fresh tears to my eyes. "What would you do if you were a mermaid?" I asked. So you told me how you would swim far away to find your prince and forever love waiting on a distant shore. Something that would never happen now that your cancer was terminal. Today with a heavy heart I spread your ashes across those same waves. My heart breaking with missing you. “Swim my little mermaid swim,” I whisper into the breeze.