We are each other’s immortality. Each of us is a skein of lives stretching forward and backward in time, connecting everyone we have known, everyone they have known, and everyone who will come after us. We carry each other back from the threshold of life and death. Some part of those we loved is gone forever, but some part is ours to have and to hold and to make real in the world.“
David Takahashi Morris

Sometime in the middle of September 2015, as the first brave leaves began to shift, my 83-year-old father decided he was done with this business of living. He was doing what poet Mary Oliver so eloquently refers to as “breathing just a little and calling it a life,” thanks to his trusty oxygen tank.

Dad had been residing in the long-term care wing of his local hospital, following a bad fall and subsequent hip surgery gone awry the previous October. And he was suffering from a perfect storm of ailments – failing heart, kidney and lungs. He was tired and he was ready to die.

And so began an intense but soulful season of reconciliation, ritual healing, and peaceful transition. As the leaves turned, we were given two and half months. Dad died in the wee small hours of the morning of November 5th, as I lay asleep in the recliner beside his hospital bed, holding his frail hand.

Friends, family, and my cohort of social media peeps were, by turns, encouraged, inspired and aghast at a few of the rituals I enacted during the months before and after his death. Some of these rituals were intensely personal ones while others were moments I chose to share publicly on Facebook thereafter, in the interest of presenting a more artisanal and transparent approach to death, dying and grief work. The overwhelming response by many who were following along was one of amazement: amazement that I had the courage to face some of these moments, most notably my choice to witness his cremation.

As I look back at each of these moments and what I’ve come to name my Stations of the Loss, I pin most all my courage on that first moment after he confessed his wish to die now. My wholehearted willingness to enter into the real and compassionate conversation with Dad and to dare to say yes to his dying and all that comes with it paved the way for the remaining station stops. And though the rest of the journey was hardly easy, it contained incredible moments of great presence, truth, and beauty.

 

Station #1: The Crucial Conversation

Upon declaring his fervent wish to die immediately, I realized that Dad and I were long overdue to have “the conversation,” and by conversation, I mean all of the unsaid words that had long since been pushed under the family carpet. I knew it would be painful to watch my father attempt to take leave of the planet with an old, rolled up carpet of regrets, failures, and unresolved issues tucked under his arm, and so I said, “OK, Dad, let’s talk.”

I remember Dad saying, “But we are talking.” “He was doing what poet Mary Oliver so eloquently refers to as ‘breathing just a little and calling it a life,’ thanks to his trusty oxygen tank.”

And I said, “No, Dad. The real conversation. The one we have when we know that we have nothing left to lose than what’s inscribed on the inner walls of our hearts. That conversation.”

“Oh,” he replied, in his tiniest voice.

 

Station #2: The Healing Time

That first crucial conversation entailed apologies and forgiveness work for both of us, not to mention a small infinity pool of tears. While my father and I were not exactly estranged, we were certainly far from close, nor engaged in what I would call life’s most honest and raw dialogue. It was time to get real.

To go there, I knew it was time to write my father a healing letter. Via a long-distance phone call, I spoke my lifelong truth together with my words of forgiveness, blessings, and gratitude; and expressed my wishes for him, relative to other healing work and final conversations with other family members. We cried and he expressed his regret at not having been a better father.

I also shared my beliefs around how we are all assigned short or long straws in life, and how I previously believed he was given the short straw in so many respects. I then told him that I no longer believed that to be true. Through this healing process, I came to a new level of understanding about our shared interconnectedness. So I told him I would be bringing him a bendy straw the next day when I traveled up from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia to visit him; as symbol of this tethered journey we shared and as a courage talisman for him to hold onto for his continued journey forth into death.

I went on to write two more letters to Dad in the weeks that followed. I didn’t share these with him but they were especially cathartic for me in that anticipatory grief stage. One of the letters was more of a poetic litany of worries and laments in answer to the repetitive prompt, “You’re dying and…” I printed these letters before my final visit up to see him. The letters eventually found their way into a wrapped prayer bundle that I placed in his cremation casket.

The essential gift from this Station of the Loss is that I was able to let go, in a very short but intense period of time, a lifetime of unresolved hurt, anger and grief, making room for the necessary forgiveness and healing. I had shifted from those places of outrage to indifference on the healing continuum, to this final place of peace with him. With this enormous weight lifted, I felt ready to travel to the next station of my loss.

He was doing what poet Mary Oliver so eloquently refers to as ‘breathing just a little and calling it a life,’ thanks to his trusty oxygen tank.”

 

Station #3: Lasting Impressions

I ventured up to Victoria the next day. Dad was on some heavier-duty pain meds, fighting an infection, and in bad shape. I suspected he thought he was not going to make it through. While he was still somewhat coherent, I asked his permission to take his fingerprint impressions. I had brought an art journal and a black ink stamp pad for this express purpose. My plan was to make a mixed media fingerprint tree from these impressions as well as craft a fingerprint jewelry pendant.

This imprint ritual, while unconventional, remains one of my most cherished memories from this journey. He was very weak but would attempt to help me throughout the endeavor, pushing his finger onto the page, and thereby ruining the impression. The best impressions entailed the lightest, gentlest touch. And so I would begin again and eventually, he would nod off again and I would be able to get the perfect imprint from each finger.

I took a bit more time later that afternoon to capture some selfies of us and a few video clips of him sleeping. I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve gone back to those images and video footage in the weeks and months that followed. I shamelessly evangelize in support of continual documentation – video interviews and storytelling, countless photos and images of shared moments and activities – to any and all facing similar life moments with loved ones.

When I finally hugged him goodbye that day, he clung to me with a fierceness that defied his frail health. On the ferry ride home that night, I spent some time studying these lasting impressions; marveling at how these imprints were his and his alone. No one else before or since would bear these finger markings which brought to mind the words of a dying Aborigine tribal elder on Oprah’s Belief mini-series, who lamented that when he died, his inimitable song would die with him. His words impacted for me. Crafting this ritual reminder reminded me that each one of us carries not only a sacred life strand and song line, but the potential for indelible impressions.

It’s evident that left thumb was Dad’s first impression. 😉

This visit allowed for a more poignant visit during the weekend of Canadian Thanksgiving, when I was able to bring the family back up with me. We found Dad had miraculously rallied and was eating lunch in the dining room. We spent the day watching the Blue Jays win one of their last World Series games that year against the Texas Rangers. I didn’t have the heart to share with Dad later that his beloved Jays would not go on to the final series. I managed to capture some great pictures of Dad and the kids, and while a short visit, it proved memorable. It would be the last time either of my children would see their grandpa alive.

 

Station #4: The Palliative Presence Project

My next two visits the last week of October and again in the first week of November were mostly about being present for Dad.

His infection had since been treated, he was now receiving all his pain medications intravenously, and he had begun to refuse all food and drink. He also took to trying to take his air tube out any chance he could, believing that if he went without air, he might die faster.

The curse of having a daughter who is a celebrant and hospice volunteer meant that he was made to endure an array of soulful poems, end-of-life blessings, and guided meditations. Dad was not a poetry guy, nor was he particularly spiritual, being a card-carrying lapsed Catholic and all. But he did love music, so Mom and I kept a variety of classical and soft instrumental music playing softly in the background, and we took turns bearing witness to him in these last uncomfortable weeks and days. I also led Dad in some guided Stephen Levine meditations, allowing him to visualize releasing his breath and making room for death to breathe him.

On one notable morning, I was showing him a text message and photo of his brother in hospice care near Toronto, who had opted to refuse treatment for his recently-diagnosed, late-stage cancer. My cousin had wished to convey to Dad that if Dad died first, he was to swing by and “pick up Uncle Frank” on the way.

As I shared the message and photo with Dad, he suddenly began to gasp and choke. Mom and I quickly hailed a nurse and got him propped up in bed a bit better. When I returned back to sharing the photo and message with him a little while later, he replied, “Well where the heck do you think I was going?! I was on my way to go get him when you two made all that commotion and brought me back!”

Dad held onto the bendy straws I gave him until his dying breath.

We enjoyed a long-overdue giggle about that but it was a humble reminder of how we had unwittingly violated his “do not resuscitate” orders.

As it turns out, that would not be the day he would die. Nor the next nor the ones in the week thereafter. His dying time proved to be a slow process. He had gone more than a week and a half without food and water when I snuck back home for a few days for my daughter’s surprise 16th birthday party.

When I returned back to his hospital the following weekend, he was noticeably more unresponsive but still generating urine output, a strong heart rate, and a solid breathing rate. I kept checking his hands and feet for signs of body temperature cooling and bracing myself for death rattle breathing, but there was no evidence yet of any of these last-stage symptoms.

I hinted to him on All Soul’s Day that it might be a grand and redemptive day to make his exit. There was likely to be a party and parade going on in the great beyond and it might all prove rather auspicious, I gushed. Plus, he had several siblings and loved ones already on the other side there to greet him. He was buying none of that though. He just kept firmly gripping onto the white bendy straw that we kept in his right hand. (Prior to this day, the straw had been a lime green one until a new nurse inadvertently threw it out during one of the shift changes.)

In these last days of his slow yet active dying, many were beginning to speculate that he must be either waiting for someone or desiring to die alone. I’m not sure it was either of those things, but I do know that had BC’s Death with Dignity legislation been officially ratified, Dad would have requested his death cocktail long before.

During the afternoon of his penultimate day, I deliberately left his bedside and nestled myself in the chair by the far corner window as a way to give him more space. I also spent a fair amount of time off-site that day. Mom was beyond exhausted, so she chose to go home that afternoon and attempt to get a good night’s sleep. Stubbornly Irish to the end, Dad was now at the 16-day mark without food or water, with the exception of the small spritz of scotch, which was his last raspy request to Mom the day prior.

Earlier in the day, Dad had begun exhibiting more pain, discomfort, and Lazarus-like movements with his arms, so we increased his Morphine dosage slightly, which seemed to settle him. The night nurse came on and immediately noted changes in his breathing rate and extremities. I sat with him that night as his breathing pattern began to slow ever so slightly.

And such was it that in the early hours of that morning on November 5th, Dad took his last breath, as I lay asleep next to his bed on the recliner, holding his hand. I woke up suddenly around 4:28 am, looked over at him, and could hear that his air tank was now working solo. I stole a moment in that surreal space and time to be with him before calling the nurse, even as I knew this would mess with his official time of death. Not that we had any real way of gauging that, given that her last visit to the room was 3:45 am.

I called Mom and then immediately began preparing the room for her arrival. The night nurse was infinitely compassionate and gave us ample time to be with him, as needed. I suspected Mom would not want to participate in a more elaborate death care ritual, but I wanted to give her the opportunity to take as much time alone with him in the room as she needed. When she arrived, I had the lights dimmed, the music playing, a candle illumined, a warm basin of water, towels, a washcloth, a comb, and a new blanket and hospital gown ready for her to groom and wash him.

Mom spent about 30 minutes tending to him and uttering her farewells and laments aloud. After she signed the necessary documents and we spoke with the doctor (who seemed more interested in regaling us with tales of his moonlighting job as the honorary consulate general of Jamaica than expediting our paperwork), we left the hospital and ventured out back to the gardens to collect leaves for my cremation blessing bundle and for the graveside service altar. I was surprised to see Mom embrace this simple act of collecting berries, pinecones, and leaves. I imagine that, like me, she found it to be calming in those surreal minutes upon leaving the hospital where she had spent the last year visiting her husband of almost 60 years.

“I hinted to him on All Soul’s Day that it might be a grand and redemptive day to make his exit.”

And so it was that with fallen leaves and other earth goodies in hand, we looked up to his hospital window and said the second of many more goodbyes.

 

Station #5: DIY Casket

Mom and Dad had pre-purchased cremation urns and plots at the local funeral home many years prior. Had that not been so, I would have directed them to be open to the notion of a home funeral and green burial, but alas, this was the choice they made at the time, which in retrospect, Mom seemed slightly regretful about, relative to some of the paid-for aspects.

While most of the details were well planned, there was one important detail, however, that we had neglected to clarify. This detail was the disbursement of cremains and it led to Mom and I having an unexpectedly fierce conversation at the hospital in that hour after he died, when she happened to mention his cremains and I reminded her of my request for a portion. Suffice to say that her portion definition differed greatly from mine: I was envisioning a full third of his cremains whereas she perceived a portion to mean a teaspoon of his bone fragments. (Cautionary note to readers: ensure you have this explicit and detailed conversation well in advance of a loved one’s death).

Thanks to the intuitive and compassionate witnessing of the funeral director in our meeting with her later that day, Mom softened her steadfast resolve and I was able to “negotiate” for a quarter of his cremains. (Oddly enough, her reticence ended up having nothing to do with her religious beliefs about the afterlife and everything to do with the pragmatics of having purchased a tandem cremation plot and burial urn of a certain size.)

I then requested to be present for what is called a witness cremation two days later, something more than 90% of people opt not to do. I also asked if I might decorate his unfinished pine cremation casket and so this, too, was arranged for the following day at the funeral home.

That next day, I showed up to the funeral home with music, paint, and other art supplies and set about painting his casket black and embellishing it with washi tape, printed photos of him, some irreverently reverent skull imagery tissue paper, a black toe tag with the words “Handle with Care” inscribed upon it, and a plethora of white chalk writings.

I had to work fast because there was a memorial service scheduled an hour and a half later, so while it wasn’t entirely what I would have wanted, it was decidedly more decorative than its plain pine beginnings. With white chalk in hand, I began writing Celtic theologian John O’Donohue’s “In Praise of Fire” atop the casket, Rumi’s “This is Love” poem across one side, and the immortal words of Lou Reed’s widow, Laurie Anderson, across the other, in which she asks: “What is Death but the release of love?”

As I hurriedly inscribed the last written touches on the casket, memorial guests were beginning to arrive at the funeral home. It was a comedic moment reminiscent of John Cleese from Fawlty Towers, as Dad’s tricked-out and rather gothic-looking casket was wheeled out the side door to the driveway at the same moment that mystery memorial man’s cedar casket was being rolled into the chapel from the back room.

I decorated his plain unfinished pine cremation casket with black craft paint, white chalk writings, photos,
decorative washi tape, black gift tags, and death motif tissue from luncheon napkins.

The newbie funeral director assigned to escort me, stage left, asked if he could take pictures. He’d never seen anything like this and was noticeably excited. I agreed but not before I exacted a promise from him that he was to offer this creative grief ritual opportunity to others who might wish to do the same.

While rushed (and stressful on account of accidentally spilling black paint on their rose-colored carpet in those moments before departing the chapel room), that morning remains etched in my mind and heart as a sacred memory I will forever cherish.

It was a comedic moment reminiscent of John Cleese in Fawlty Towers, as Dad’s tricked-out and rather gothic-looking casket was quickly wheeled out the side door to the driveway at the very same moment that mystery memorial man’s cedar casket was being rolled into the chapel from the back room.”

Family members were confused. Why would you take all that time to decorate a casket that is just going to burn? they wondered. Because healing and ritual, I said, and the reminder that all life is impermanence. This was a moment of art imitating life imitating art imitating death, and I wished to mark that.

That night, I began preparing his cremation bundle which included the letters I had written to him, notes of gratitude, flower petals, some leaves, berries, and tiny pinecones from the hospital garden, and his white bendy straw. I wrapped it in white tissue paper bound with decorative white rice paper, tied it with string, and then finally, tucked a small farewell note card and a couple of tiny white rose buds to the top. I now felt a tiny bit more prepared to face what would prove to be an indescribable Station of the Loss that next morning.

 

Station #6: Into the Fire

The crematorium was less than a five-minute drive from my brother’s house where I was staying. As I preparing to leave that morning, I began to feel physically ill, so I forced myself to vomit as a way to dissipate some of my understandable queasiness. With a few swallows of water and four deep breaths, I immediately felt better and more resolved to face the task ahead.

The funeral director met me in the parking lot, where I then hopped into the hearse with her, and we drove up the short driveway to the doors of the crematorium. We were met by the crematorium operator, who was very polite if guarded. Witness cremations, it would seem, are rarely enacted at this crematorium so I suspect he was as curious about me as I was about him.

In this game show called death, Dad was handed chamber Door #1. When one elects to bear witness to a loved one’s cremation, there enters this opportunity to enact additional ritual into this auspicious act of corporeal transfiguration. The crematorium operator is nudged and reminded into a heightened sense of duty, deliberation, and honor. And the other chamber remains empty and silent in solidarity with those bereaved who dare enter as witnesses.

As I looked at Door #2, I was reminded of the Edgar Allan Poe poem “The Raven,” Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and the chorus line of “Disco Inferno.” Odd where my brain wanders in moments where extreme presence and focus are demanded.

I placed what I’ve come to name as my 4G (grief, grace, grit and gratitude) bundle, first upon Dad’s heart and then finally laying it to rest upon his belly, seat of the solar plexus chakra, associated with fire and the power of transformation. I did so such that it would burn upon and with the center of his body.

The grief bundle filled with nature’s bounty, my torn letter pieces, and gratitude slips.

I noticed he was not dressed as per my white gown instructions, but I let that go and made mental note to be more fastidious about burial/cremation garment inquiries with my own client families going forth. I took one last photo of him, and because they were still worried about his MRCA (staph) infection, I was instructed not to touch him. We then closed the casket and I pushed the nondescript black button and held it for about five seconds.

The hum began. I chose in that moment to reimagine this hum as Leonard Cohen’s proffered sacred chord, as I watched the holy, high heat on the thermal meter race its way upwards to consume his chariot, the bundle with its earth gifts, and Dad in one co-mingled offering by increasing degrees: 1600 degrees Fahrenheit, to be exact. Into the fire, he was reunited.

At this point, I need to divulge that I’m no more courageous than the average person; not by a long shot. Those who know me well, in fact, know that my doppelgänger is a skittish chicken. Which is to say, if I could do it, so could anyone. 

After what seemed an eternity but was actually only a few minutes, I nodded my head, thanked the operator for his part in bearing final witness and service to Dad’s corporeal time on earth, and we left him to his work. The funeral director and I spent another half hour in the empty hearse debriefing, as we chatted about everything from witness cremations to family dynamics at funerals, to end-of-life rituals, to her own personal road to mortuary science. I especially valued having her as an empathetic ear and shoulder during this highly-stressful time.

I note this because understandably, this station stop became another endless source of horrified curiosity for others. How could you witness his cremation?, many wondered. Wasn’t that hard? Yes, it was beyond difficult, and yet it was also a strangely liberating and grace-filled experience. Bearing witness to such human transfiguration, most especially one’s own parent, is nothing short of one of life’s most sacred moments.

As next of kin, I felt a kind of torch-bearing transference of energy, compelling me to show up, in the words of David Takahashi Morris, as “each other’s immortality.”

 

Station #7: Greener Pastures

Most of the station stops had been, until this point, solo pilgrimage pauses. I was now fully focused on writing his graveside interment ceremony, which we had set for the Monday afternoon, in order for my husband and daughter to attend.

As I reflected on his season of his dying, I began to sense that autumn would be a theme well worth weaving into the ceremonial words. I chose to incorporate my turning leaf ritual which has enjoyed various incarnations in previous ceremonies I have crafted. I found a red, maple leaf and yellow heart-shaped leaf from amongst the leaves we had collected from the hospital garden, so I inscribed his birthdate with black Sharpie marker on one side of the maple leaf and his date of death on the other, and bespoke of autumn and these sacred dates as his full-circle season of life.

We then tucked this leaf into the velvet urn bag, together with the yellow leaf with the word agape written on it, in the seconds prior to inviting the others to place a small cloth heart inside the urn bag.

For a benediction reading, I selected the poem “Autumn Rose Elegy” by Rumi and invited everyone to place orange roses on his graveside urn at the end of the service and take a second one home. We played a handful of songs through the service, beginning with a powerful Celtic chant invocation of “The Beatitudes” (Owen and Moley Ó Súilleabháin) as nod to Dad’s Irish Catholic roots; followed by the haunting elegiac cello with “Wellspring” by Adam Hurst, as my father’s cremains were interred; and ending with “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong. The final lyrics proved perfect because just before the service began, the grey sky suddenly turned blue and the sun came out and stayed to witness our ceremony.

It was not so much wonderful as wonder-filled, and the memorial gardens representative agreed, remarking that this was her first celebrant-led service and amongst her top three favorite graveside services she had witnessed over the years. She was impressed by all the customized music, rituals, prayers and other poetic words of committal and release, which she later admitted, were markedly different from the usual generic interment services typically offered.

 

Station #8: Celebration of Life

We caught the ferry home later that same evening and decided to defer his Celebration of Life to a later date, pending family schedules. My brother and his family had a pre-booked vacation to the Caribbean scheduled for the last couple of weeks of November, and we were hosting a French exchange student most of December, so it became evident that the official Celebration of Life would need to be postponed until early January, after the holidays.

Not everyone was on board with this, believing, in that old-school way many inherit, that we needed to rush right into “getting it over with.” Knowing that I was the one who would be planning, officiating, and creating all aspects of the service from slide show tribute to memorial tokens, I remained steadfast in taking my time. If I had it all to do over again, I would fashion the timing exactly the same way except I might even have built an additional two weeks after the New Year for myself.

I took those initial two months to just be with my grief, rest, and enter deliberately into the holiday season. I enrolled in Megan Devine’s Writing Your Grief 30-day class, which allowed me to process my complicated grief and connect with a powerful small grief group. I also took the time necessary to dance the celebrant’s dance of authentically and diplomatically celebrating a man who knew tremendous life losses and imperfections as a father; yet remained charming to and adored by all who came to make his acquaintance.

And all was well that ended well – more than well, in fact. We hosted his celebration of life in the upstairs lounge area of my parent’s former retirement community, where several of their friends still lived.

I continued with the seasons theme but also tacked on the motifs of sojourn and music in order to tell his story linearly as a songline; incorporating story, songs and slide show imagery from each epoch of his life. His grandson played the Bach cello suites as well as performed a Frank Sinatra acoustic guitar and vocal tribute. Friends shared memories and the service was alive with a carefully-selected array of music, ranging from the Glenn Miller Orchestra to Dean Martin, to Eric Clapton to yet more Frank Sinatra. The final benediction poem by Lawrence Raab entitled “Request,” with its nod to the toe-tapping song, “You Look Good to Me” by the Oscar Peterson Trio, offered lyrical segue, as we then played this song as a final meditative tribute.

Residents, family and friends alike came away with a heightened sense of who my father was throughout the four seasons of his life (formative, frontier, family and final) and the kinds of things he stood for. They were invited to write words of fond remembrance on tags which hung on the mini-tribute tree, and each left with a handcrafted beaded bookmark of William Stafford’s poem, “The Way It Is,” together with a keepsake strand of embroidery thread as not-so-subtle reminder of the fragility of life.

Following the service, all enjoyed a luncheon buffet together with Dixie cups of butterscotch ice cream, in honor of his decades of service as a milkman and ice cream parlor owner.

Many people came up to me, astounded that such a celebration could be possible a full two months following his death. I advised all who commented that while the ideal approach is almost always a living tribute, how and whenever we choose to host such a tribute is a personal and time-honoring choice.

Dad would’ve loved to have been present for such an interwoven tapestry of laughter and tears, stories and music, imagery and food. Yet, as poet Lawrence Raab hints at, perhaps he was present in some kind of ineffable way.

Friends shared memories, and the service was alive with a carefully-selected array of music, ranging from the Glenn Miller Orchestra…to Eric Clapton to yet more Frank Sinatra.”

Others I spoke with after were curious about how to go about their own good work of deciding which words, songs, stories and rituals they might like to include for their own service. Bemusedly, I recounted how Dad was adamantly opposed to having any kind of memorial service, which led to my subsequent discussion with him about that in the weeks prior to his death. I had cautioned Dad that he may not get the deciding vote on account of the fact that he wasn’t going to be the one left behind to grieve. He respected that. In the weeks prior, I shared some of the readings, songs and themes with him that I intended to highlight for his Celebration of Life and took his nods and hand squeezes as small yet affirmative signs of approval.

A small grief quilt I began stitching in late September of 2015.

I later suspected that Dad’s initial reticence was born of a fear that no one would show up to such an affair. As it turned out, there were 48 people in attendance, and it was standing-room only. I want to believe that had he been eavesdropping in on the service from the Great Beyond, he too might have warmed to the power of ceremony after witnessing how moved attendees were by the various service aspects.

*******

All this said, the journey continues. Yet as I reflect back on the intense whirlwind of that season, I still feel enormous gratitude.

Spiritual teacher Ram Dass believes we are all just “walking each other home.” Helping midwife Dad from this life into the realm of mystery as well as facilitate my own soul’s healing in the process remain the two greatest gifts this Stations of the Loss journey bequeathed me.

It took courage, to be sure, but that courage was mostly about being brave enough to show up, hold space, bear witness, dare to add my own creative touches, and mark the holy heck out of the last station stop moments of his journey called life. Short of a Dixieland jazz band parade, my father was well-celebrated and attended to at each and every last step of the way. When people ask me how he died, I I tell them he was ritualized to death because he was.

I;m certain that had I not chosen to creatively mark those last moments with Dad with as many personal and meaningful rituals as I did, I would not have moved through that initial complicated grief stage quite so smoothly. 

Like all celebrants, I sing from the song sheet that ceremony matters. That final sojourn with Dad six years ago truly helped illuminate that belief a little brighter for me.

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(adapted and slightly excerpted from a piece which first appeared in the September 2016 issue of “Celebrancy Today”; pages 39-50)