Associated Press • 12 Aug 2018
A year after Will and Daniel Payne lost their mom, and nearly two decades since their father’s death, it was time to follow their wishes for the afterlife.
As they board a boat with three generations of family, the brothers slip into flippers and de-fog their masks. Will, who became a certified scuba diver just days earlier, checks his oxygen tank and jumps into the azure waters to secure a concrete marker mixed with their ashes at a memorial reef about three miles out to sea.
This unusual resting place is exactly what the Paynes say their parents wanted. Buel Payne, a former Coast Guard member, and Linda Payne, who grew up on the water and loved boating, will spend their afterlife in a memorial modeled after the lost city of Atlantis, among impressive lion statues and ornate gates and pillars encrusted with sea life.