In this short story, Sherman Alexie writes about the way which the main character Victor deals with the death of his father. This is a unique situation because it not only describes Victor's struggle mourning for his father's death, but also his struggle to find forgiveness for his father's mistakes. Living on the Spokane Reservation in Washington, Victor travels with his childhood friend Thomas to Phoenix to retrieve his father's remains.
The ceremony in this story is the process of learning to forgive and say goodbye. Victor struggles to do this because he had little empathy for his abusive alcoholic father, who ran away and was absent for most of his life. In order to accomplish this, Victor and Thomas talked about the old days and their different experiences with Victor's father, and the memories they had with him. The ceremony is completed when Victor gives Thomas half of his father's ashes, and they release them over the Spokane Falls. This ceremony is concluded by Thomas when he says,
"I'm going to travel to Spokane Falls one last time and toss these ashes into the water. And your father will rise like a salmon, leap over the bridge, over me, and find his way home. It will be beautiful. His teeth will shine like silber, like a rainbow. He will rise, Victor, he will rise"(Alexie, 74).
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