A family's heartache: Tragic message in a bottle

A note written by the mother and daughter accompanied the ashes of Brian Mullins found in a bottle that washed ashore last week. Photo / AP

A bottle containing the ashes of a Texas man along with some handwritten notes from loved ones has been returned to the Gulf of Mexico, resuming its ocean journey after it washed up on a Florida Panhandle beach.

The beachgoer who found the bottle near Miramar Beach handed it over to local authorities last week. Inside were some of the ashes of Brian Mullins, a tow truck driver from Garland, Texas, who died earlier this year at age 39.

Sgt. Paula Pendleton of the Walton County Sheriff's Office said she cried while reading the notes, which included the phone number of the deceased man's family. His mother had placed four $1 bills in the bottle to help pay for the phone calls she hoped people would make to update her family on the bottle's journey.

"This bottle contains the ashes of my son, Brian, who suddenly and unexpectedly passed on March 9, 2019," one of the handwritten notes said. "I'm sending him on one last adventure."

A second note, written on wrinkled school paper, especially moved Sgt. Pendleton, whose husband died last year.

"Hi, my name is Peyton," the second note read. "I am Brian's daughter. When my father passed, I was 14 years old. It has struck our whole family pretty hard and, so far, it has been a very hard road. But, like my granny said, he loved to be free. So, that's exactly what we are doing."

Speaking in an interview with TV station WFAA, Peyton said: "Being a daddy's girl my whole life, he's my best friend. I want what's best for him even though he can't tell me what that is."

Thousands are now following her dad's journey on Facebook, on Peyton's page called Brian's Journey.

"I want to keep him alive. And if I can't do that physically I'm going to do everything I can," she said. "And that's what I'm doing. I want his story to be known, completely."

When officer Pendleton came into contact with the bottle, she knew she had to help.

"I was overwhelmed with emotion," Pendleton recalled. "I sat in here, in my patrol car, and cried like a baby."

Hello. My name is Sergeant Paula Pendleton. I work for the Walton County Sheriff's Office. I've had a very interesting...

Posted by Darlene Mullins on Saturday, 10 August 2019

Pendleton enlisted an acquaintance who owns a charter boat to ferry the ashes far off the Florida coast. And on Friday, the bottle, the dollar bills and the ashes were again at sea.

"He was an avid fisherman. He wanted to travel the world," his mother Darlene Mullins said, noting that her son had never gone ocean fishing. Garland, a suburb northeast of Dallas, is about 480km from the Gulf Coast.

Unable to afford to take her son's ashes out to sea herself, the mother entrusted the task to relatives bound for Florida. While visiting the small Panhandle community of Destin in early August, the bottle was released into the tide.

"We thought it might have been the last we saw of the bottle," Darlene Mullins said. "But we'll see where it turns up again."

- AP