Toby

Grandpa has an unmarked grave in a small town in Wales. Due to a misunderstanding between well-intentioned but distant relatives, the funds for the headstone were used to offset other expenses, and Grandpa was added to the traditional family plot.
### The graveyard is modest, unkempt, and cramped. You can’t tell exactly because his is not the only unmarked plot, but there is a constant sense of disrespecting the dead unintentionally. This isn’t Danny Boy; I don’t want them to hear me, but it’s all the more likely that I’ll stub my toe or trip over a root, and cursing in a cemetery, even if from shock, makes me feel all the more out of place.
### My living family is small, so by visiting Grandpa I surround myself with more kin than I’m used to. More cousins – Josie and Elwyn – show me around and tidy things up a little while we’re there. I ask questions, we share memories. I wasn’t able to come to Wales for the funeral, and had never lived close enough for frequent visits before he died. He teased me about a goatee when I was in my early 20s, and I used to take road atlases with me to show him where I’d been all over North America.
### He knew he shouldn’t smoke, but was of an age and disposition where he was never going to stop. Smoking didn’t kill him – he lived until his early 90s – so there hardly seemed much point in stopping. His room at the assisted living place had the unmistakable sheen of accumulated tar and soot. You couldn’t really see it, but you could feel it, you knew it was on everything, and in guiltier moments you hesitated before sitting down in the adjacent chair to his. But he had a love of stories, and as the youngest, I had been told them the fewest times, had the most patience, expressed genuine surprise at the ones I hadn’t heard.
### He smoked the cigarettes which were stylish when he was younger, big unfiltered things with plastic tips. He claimed they weren’t as processed as their sleek, bleached white modern counterparts, and therefore not as bad for him, because he knew I didn’t approve. The ashes ended up everywhere because he had that bumptious quality of people who dribble jam on their shirts when eating toast, and don’t really worry about the stains. Of course, I never said anything, I don’t think my face betrayed me.
### The thermos seemed apt, a perverse sort of blessing. When I found out I was going to be able to visit him, I remembered something he had told me years before. He wished he’d spent more time on the Pacific Ocean. So I went to the beach in Santa Cruz, filled it with fresh ocean water, and packed it away in my suitcase for the trip. It was a bit ragged and battered but the seal was good and it made it to the UK without difficulty.
### When I had my moment alone with Grandpa at his grave, I poured out some of the water on his unmarked spot, and told him I’d brought the ocean to him. The rest I left, sealed inside, to become a makeshift headstone. Rolled up inside, along with the water, was a simple eulogy, written in Sharpie on a piece of thin plastic. ‘I miss you, Grandpa.’