Convergence and the needle's eye

Sitting atop a high stool at the kitchen couner in a lovely, large-enough rental home near the water in West Seattle, son Sean reading to 7-year-old Kiera and 4-year-old Drew upstairs while daughter-in-law Sue takes a shower. Feel full, contented, lazy, on this overcast, rainy northwest day. Yesterday's family meal here with my 91- and 90-year-old parents, four sisters and spouses, two other grandchildren (both grownups), and my dear friend Claudia was, as usual, rowdy, raucous, and high-spirited, all of us swirling around the folks as they sat in state, laughing at the jokes and joining in the merriment as well as can be expected, given that she has trouble understanding things that were, only one year ago, obvious to her, and he is doing his best to take on what may be his hardest role in life, despite his nearly 50 years of being a doctor: looking after, cooking and cleaning up after, his beloved wife who is slowly and subtly incandescing before our eyes.

Though being with family again was a shocking re-introduction into this old, familiar framework after another year away, and though I had just barely begun to process the intense book event on Vashon Island the night before, and had just driven up to the rental only two hours before the family started to arrive; though Sean, Sue and the kids had hardly slept the night before due to their 1 AM arrival from Boston, I, and I would say everyone else, somehow moved through the eye of a needle into a flow that felt delicious and warm and all those other fuzzy words that we use to try to describe the ineffable yet powerful connections we humans have for one another, especially those we have engaged with in one form or another all our lives, moving through crisis after crisis and somehow not only surviving but thriving.

The book event on Vashon held 15 people circled on comfortable couches and chairs inside a bookstore, talking deeply about various experiences related to death and grieving. More than any other of these evenings, this event focused on the mysterious connections we have to one another both pre- and post-death, especially as revealed in our dreams and other uncanny circumstances. Everyone very present. Though it did take some people a long time to open up, even their listening felt compelling, as they magnetically drew out the stories of others.

One of my favorites: the woman who talked about death as a part of living, illustrating it with a story of how her father (or was it brother/) was dying of some chronic disease in an upstairs bedroom, while downstairs everyone carried on their normal lives, though visiting him once in a while upstairs. Then, on one day, at the same moment, three family members all suddenly ran upstairs, to reach him just as he let go of his final breath.

Tomorrow, we visit with the folks at their new home, the Covenant Shores Retirement Community on Mercer Island, for lunch. Mom: "will hot dogs and potato chips be okay for the kids?"—trying so hard to be gracious in constantly deteriorating interior circumstances. Then tomorrow evening: a book event at my sister Mary's, to which sisters Kathy and Kristin also hope to attend. I notice that their evident interest makes me feel both grateful and hesitant: all my life I have kept my life and work separate from family origins. Are they about to converge? Are we about to take a new step in our family dynamic to ease the way for our parents as they are drawn through the needle's eye of death?