Dock of The Living Dead

(Bob is one of the oddly wonderful people portrayed in “Afloat In Emerald City,” a book being written by Terry Winckler about the 7 years his family lived on a boat in San Francisco Bay. Their marina was full of drunks, a preacher, the occasional prostitute, poor old folks, dreamers, children, and Bob.)

One Saturday morning, a neighbor named Bob came knocking on our hull. He lived on a small sailboat on the other side of the marina.

“I am dying,” he said when I popped my head out of the hatch. “I was hoping that you and your family would come to my funeral.”

We had been to two other funerals of boaters who died at the marina, but never before had we gotten advance notice or a personal invitation from the decease–ee.

“Dying?” I said. “Dying!?”

“Oh, yes,” Bob said, patting his swollen belly. “It’s a done deal. My gut is full of cancer and the doctor gives me three months at the most. I don’t trust him. The way I feel, two months max, so I gotta get the funeral out of the way quick. It’s next Thursday at sundown at my boat. Sorry for the late notice. Can you come?”

“Sure.” I mean, of course you say sure – the dead man talking is right in front of you. “Should we, uh, bring anything?”

“Nah, just yourselves. See you Thursday.”

Floating Funerals

As Bob walked off, with a bounce in his stride, I thought about the little guy in the boat next door whose funeral was the first we attended at the marina. He did it the traditional way, by dying first. A number of us boaters followed the funeral boat out to the middle of the bay where, after a saying of kind words, his ashes were poured from a small urn in a fine stream.

Even the 6’5″ hard-partying beastie boy across from us, did the right thing by dying first. He died of a heart attack after picking up a V-4 boat engine off the dock. “Oof,” he said, “this engine kicked my ass,” and dropped dead. Again, we followed the funeral boat out in the middle of the bay, where sad words told of a young life plucked too soon. Then a large bag full of remains was hoisted to the rail and poured out. It must have been a cut rate mortuary, because big chunks of Jamie fell into the bay, splashing the faces of mourners looking over the rail. A breeze swirled the finer ashes and you could see people trying not to gag and choke disrespectfully.

At sundown on Thursday, with our two small boys in tow, we walked over to Bob’s boat, passing the spot where months before a dead man’s body had been hauled out of the water. His zipper was down and that was the clue that told sheriff’s investigators he fell into the water while peeing off a dock, no doubt drunk, somewhere up-tide from us.

Happy Mouurners

Just up the way to the dock on the left was Bob’s slip – and by the sounds of mourning, a night of festivity was at hand.

Lanterns and boat lights brightened a scene of happy, chatting boat people and friends. Various finger foods were plated atop dock boxes and 60’s rock music poured from one boat’s fancy sound system. I didn’t see a single tear glinting in the light, nothing but happy faces whose mouths were talking about good old Bob.

Good old Bob was the center of attention, lying on his back on the dock in what looked like a homemade cardboard coffin – made large for comfort. Bob has his hands prayerfully folded across his swollen belly, and occasionally reached one out to grasp a drink, which meant he had to rise up like Dracula to quaff it.

Bob was delighting people around him with stories of his life, which because of the crowd I was too far away to hear, except for a wistful comment that he had planned to have this funeral in his favorite place on Earth – Hawaii – but he was afraid he would die first, so this would have to do.

Our kids finally got cranky and we bid Bob aloha.

Bob disappeared after that and we heard that he had gone back to Hawaii – as ashes. Of course there was no funeral, but they had to do something with his remains. I suspect that Bob, being a thoughtful man who planned things carefully, made a last request that he be sprinkled on the lee side of an island where the wind blows offshore and not in your face.