Om- Perfection

We scattered my dad's ashes into the San Marcos river last weekend. We hope to scatter them in various rivers that my dad loved.
My mom read a passage from Siddhartha. We all listened. The kids listened, too. We were totally in the moment. I loved this passage so much. It was perfect. I'm including it here because I never want to forget it.

The river flowed on towards its goal. Siddhartha saw the river hasten, made up of himself and his relatives and all the people he had ever seen. All the waves and water hasted, suffering, towards goals, many goals, to the waterfall, to the sea, to the current, to the ocean and all goals were reached and each one was succeeded by another. The water changed to vapor and rose, became rain and came down again, became spring, took and river, changed anew, flowed anew. But the yearning voice had altered. It still echoed sorrowfully, searchingly, but other voices accompanied it, voices of pleasure and sorrow, good and evil voices, laughing and lamenting voices, hundreds of voices, thousands of voices.
Siddhartha listened. Hew as now listening intently, completely absorbed, quite empty, taking in everything. Hh felt that he had now completely learned the art of listening. He ad often heard all this before, all these numbers voices in the river, but today the sounded different. He could no longer distinguish the different voices--the merry voice from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the manly voice. They all belonged to each other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the wise, the cry of indignation and groan of the dying. They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life. When Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices; when the did not listen to the sorrow or laughter, when he did not bind his should to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity; then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om--perfection.
From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny. There sone in his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of all things.
I have waited for this hour, my friend. Now that it has arrived, let me go.
(At this point, mom threw his ashes into the water.)