Diego Jiménez did not want to say goodbye to his dog, Thai, just anywhere.
For 16 years, that dog was the first face nervous students at his school in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, saw. He greeted them on the shore, watched them among the waves, and waited for them to return to land to celebrate every wave they caught. When cancer overcame him, Jiménez decided that the sea would also be the place for the farewell.
He took him on the same surfboard they had shared so many times, near the Cabo Blanco Nature Reserve, and let him go among red petals floating on the water. “I love you, big head, I’m going to miss you”, he said through tears in a video in his honor.
The sea that gave them years of shared routine was also the one that took Thai away peacefully.