Heading for Shore

This year. This ocean of release, of letting go, of trying to stay afloat. I think I have my head above water at last, though I’m still bobbing in the waves and have a bit to go before I reach the shore.

Dad

Mom

Dave

Polly Hester 

Yogi

Cindy

We celebrated Mom’s life at home last weekend, and it was everything Mom loved: A houseful of family and friends spilling into the backyard, our monthly gathering of the Sisters of Perpetual Disorder (our local women-of-a-certain-age potluck & good times group), a giveaway of Mom’s things, her four children singing together (first time since we sang rounds in the car as kids), poetry readings from Mom’s poems, my poems, and a piece written by a good friend in Mom’s honor, a plethora of potluck “comfort foods” (our SOPD food theme this month in honor of Mom), and much more music from family and friends. My three brothers all spoke (the teary part for me), and I tried to thank everyone, though I forgot many people, including Ray most of all, without whom I never would have survived the last few years of caring for Mom.

Here's a thought: let's have these celebrations of life BEFORE people are gone, so the dying can leave this life brimming with the love the rest of us get to feel at these events.

The next evening, I went to a friend’s house to try and help her husband up after he fell and got stuck. He’s a dear man who’s struggled with a lung disease for the past few years and was too weak to get himself up, and my friend has her foot in a cast and can’t bear weight. There were four of us trying, but we couldn’t move him, and he was less and less responsive. Within the next hour—after police and EMTs, after CPR, after my friend, her daughter, other friends, and I sat with him, held his hand, and called to him, he died.

My heart broke (again) for my friend and her daughter. But honestly, for me it was a surreal mix of shock at such a sudden death and my happening to be there at that sacred moment, and a calm from having become so accustomed to departures lately. Apparently, death has more for me to learn. I told my friend, jokingly, that maybe the Universe wanted my retirement plan to be “death doula.”

I still have more sorting of my mother’s stuff and 100+ years' of family photos, our friend’s funeral next week, and my father’s service to get through early next month. But in the meantime, I’m writing again, and I’ve heard word that two of my poems will be published in upcoming journals. I have a much-anticipated family wedding coming up, and a couple other joyous adventures planned with Ray and with BFFs from my youth—things to look forward to.

So I can see those beach loungers, that big striped umbrella, and ice-cold watermelon mint tea on the table, and I’m dog paddling for the sand.

Celebrating Life