How Do You Celebrate a Life?

Any damn way you want, of course.💜

I’ve removed the paywall from stories about my dad’s last year . Links are at the end of this post. xo

Dear Beautiful Friends,

Ten months after my dad left on his next adventure, we celebrated him on an unseasonably warm and sunny October weekend in Seattle. The weather gods got the memo and delivered a micro-heat wave in honor of a most beautiful human.

Back in the day.

Waterbabies unite! Uniting a group of people who live in different cities, with different school and work schedules is a bit of a magic act but we made it work. Well, “we” didn’t but “we” like to think so, with a little help from our friend the Universe.

Lake dip with niece, nephew, brother.

The celebrators consisted of: My mom, brother, Michael, sis-in-law, Tracey and their kids, Campbell and Taya; my husband, Steve, his son Sean, wife Courtney and their kids Caden and Riley (and dog Ozzie).

From left: nephew Campbell, me, Mom, niece Taya, Tracey, Michael

We are not a family of traditions. Instead, our original family of four has been making things up along the way (you should see what we did to Christmas; email me and I’ll tell you). So after my dad died, my mom, brother and I spent several months blinking at each other over what to do to honor this amazing man and bring some kind of . . . closure*.

*What is closure, do we need it, is this the right word, the closest word to That Which We Aim to Experience? who needs this closure? do I? does my mom? does my DAD? ALL OF NATURE?

There were a couple of false starts and attempts to do a “proper celebration” (inviting people, speeches, programs, menus, etc), but my mom shut it down (thank you!), and played our No Tradition card. Instead we cooked Dad’s favorite food and sat outside in the middle of our lawn (in OCTOBER), and shared stories and laughs over pasta with fresh tomato sauce, lamb chops, grilled veggies, Caprese salad, and ice cream cones with toppings.

This would have been Dad’s happy place. Devoted family man.

The trippiest part of the whole weekend was seeing the buffet table with his photos, especially the portrait propped up against the flowers. Everything about this table said, This man is no longer in the house.

Dad had his own table. (Not sponsored by Spindrift btw.)

All throughout dinner I kept peering back at this table. It was sort of weird but in a good way, and another way I can’t find words for. Unsettling but not cry-inducing. Seeing Dad at a separate table was just weird. There’s Dad, over there. Here’s the rest of us over here. We were a family doing the thing people do when their family member has died. It was HAPPENING.

Is this the power of ritual, even its necessity? To come together to celebrate, to acknowledge, to honor, to FACE the Thing? And then, to move on?

Death is so strange and puzzling and shocking. Surprises abound.

I was never bereft over my dad’s death because this guy was around for 97 years and there was nothing left unsaid or unfelt. If someone had told me years ago that my dad would get a form of dementia that would erase all his memories and he’d lose his sight and be on hospice for almost four years in a group family home living separately from his big-crush sweetheart, my mom, sitting in a chair for hours, days, years—I would have buckled over in such pain, and sobbed at such a howl-ish volume I might have downed powerlines. But none of those reactions happened, because WE CAN’T PREDICT HOW WE WILL MEET A CIRUCMSTANCE UNTIL WE GET THERE.

Oh, Life: so much mystery and magic. Such profound sadness and tragedy and unexpected beauty and reprieves in all the darkness.

I know so many of you who are in the thick of The Great Suspense of tending to elders. It’s so big and suspenseful; so many of us so unprepared for it. But I’m here to say you can do it. Be open, if you can, to the glimmers of beauty and unexpected treasures. Your experience will be yours, but not yours alone. Let your loved ones grow old and die. Let yourself have all the feelings, as judgment free as possible. Love the almost departing (or feel for them in whichever way comes naturally) for who they are right now. That was the best advice I ever received. And, whatever you’re going through I’m with you. We are all with you. If you want to talk it out, I’m here, reach out.

I’ve removed the the paywall from six stories I wrote about my Dad toward the end of his life. See if there’s anything there that helps. My experience isn’t mine alone. It’s here for you.

What’s your experience with celebrating/honoring a life?