A Wake

This is what I spent the day doing today - it was a wake for my Aunt Faye who died in the spring and I played bartender. And a million other things, including mopping the floor at the end of the day.

It was great fun as well as poignant but it got me thinking.

It's kind of sad that most of us only see our extended family at events like this one. Yes, I know there are exceptions to this but...

I saw aunts and uncles and cousins (and my cousins' children) who I hadn't seen for years, and cousins and family friends who I hadn't seen for decades. I know that it isn't easy to get people together without having a reason - but I resolved when I was there that I wasn't going to let years go by before seeing them again.

We did something I'd never seen before (now, don't try this in an airport zone, okay?). We had helium balloons in beautiful bright colors for each year of Faye's life (72 of them) and we each took one or several of them and wrote messages to Faye. And then we released all of them at the same moment - remember that photograph of the fireworks from yesterday's blog? It was just as beautiful as that to see them all racing into the sky, taking our messages away.

So despite the fact that right now I'm so tired I can hardly see, that between me and the kids and everyone else, beer and raspberry juice and several other substances were spilled on my white pants, and my feet hurt because I've been on them since 8:30 this morning (that's 12 hours ago), it was a great day.

We talked about Faye, we caught up with each other, we remembered how much we all like each other - and I guess it doesn't matter really why we got together, just the fact that we did was a very good thing.

Kate