Mom fulfills 20-year-old's last wish to be turned into coral reef

He loved the sea so much that it was only fitting he found eternal rest there.

Three weeks before his death, 20-year-old John Flowers told his mother, Phyllis, that he wanted his ashes to be placed in a concrete reef ball.

On July 26, Mr Flowers died from a rare form of brain cancer. He had requested for his brain and spine to be used for medical research, while the rest of his body should become ashes and made into an artificial coral at Eternal Reef.

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Eternal Reef is a unique sea burial site scattered across 13 locations in the US. Each reef ball is made from a special mix of concrete and cremation ash to serve as an artificial coral for marine life.

Ever since Mr Flowers was introduced to diving at the age of six, he spent most of his life by the sea.

The avid diver even enrolled to study Marine Science at the University of West Florida, a step to realising his dream of becoming an ocean palaeontologist.

But tragedy struck in his first year at university.

In 2014, Mr Flowers' vision was clouded by red spots. An MRI scan revealed that he had developed a form of brain cancer which was inoperable.

When chemotherapy and radiotherapy failed to work, doctors advised his family to prepare for his death.

"He had been to his grandparents' funerals and he said he just didn't want his own to be sad,' his mother said.

"That's why he wanted to be part of the Eternal Reef."

When he passed away in 2015, Mr Flowers' family released the reef ball off the Gulf of Mexico near his hometown of Sarasota. His reef ball contained diving mementoes like dinosaur teeth, his first dive knife and his dog tags.

It was the 700th ball to be released in the Gulf of Mexico.

According to Metro News, Mrs Flowers said she was so touched by the experience that she requested for her own ashes to be buried in Eternal Reef next to her son.

She told Fox News: "I have never dove in my life, but my son said that was his last hurrah in life."

"I have to go see him. I have to go dive."

debwong@sph.com.sg