Celebration of Life Weekend

Look at these trees! Spring has sprung in the Midwest. There's green, pink, purple and white everywhere. It's May 1st, we've got a windy and chilly May 1st here in Illinois, and it's glorious. The sun is out, the grass is green, and Spring is here, the promise of Spring is here.

Our family is celebrating, is experiencing, our third funeral in 14 months. This is the weekend we celebrate my mother's life and our family is coming in, my two adult children, the grandchildren, and other family members are coming in for the event.

We are going to honor each other, we are going to honor our feelings, we are going to work through the grief together. It's going to be sad, and it's going to be glorious, and it's going to be happy at times, and it's going to be deeply meaningful as we bring to close this era of my mother and my father, you know the great generation as they say, and also the era of this home that they lived in for 53 years and the home that my children consider their permanent homestead. So the grief is compounded, the loss of their grandmother, their grandfather, and their father in the last year. Then the knowingness that this homestead is going to move on to another family that will be blessed by its beauty and its energy.

So you know that energy of grief is powerful. It's deep. It's abiding. I don't think we ever stopped grieving those that we love and we are going to be fully present for each other this weekend. I learned a thing or two in the first two memorial services and weekends. I tried to do too much and this one, I am going to be fully present to myself. To my experiences, to the grief, to the sadness, to the joy, to the love, to the depth of love that I feel for my children, grandchildren, my cousins, aunts, and everybody that's going to be here and I'm going to be fully present for my adult children. Yeah, they're adults and they're hurting. This is tough. This is really tough and I want to be present to them so that they can have their experience and work through it and understand that it's energy and it doesn't have to always hurt like this.

You know, in America, somebody dies, we get a day or two off work, we go to a funeral, we'd go back to work, we get on a plane, and we have to fly back home, and show back up at work, and then somehow be productive, and get everything done. That's a lot. There's not much time for us to process the energy of these emotions. When we understand they're energy and we can process them with family members, with people that we trust and in a safe space, we can move the energy and integrate it into our being or move it out, depending upon what emotion it is and how it will best serve us, and then we have these tools. When grief rears its head, man it shows up at the darnedest times, and grief is around for a long time. I really don't think we ever stopped grieving the loss of a loved one. It hurts less and it comes around less often, but I still grieve the death of my brother from 1978. I've had some deep experiences with grieving my brother's passing, being in this home that I used to live with him as a child.

So as we learn that it's energy and as we learn different techniques, tools, and tricks that we can use when it overcomes us, then we can work through it, move that energy, and then we can become functional again. We can integrate it; we can learn from it. It's so important to learn how to work with these big emotions and the thought of being able to teach my young grandchildren how to do this at five and seven. Think how that will serve them in their lives. It's going to be a beautiful weekend, with us loving each other caring for each other and honoring each other, and honoring the memory of my mother, my father and my beloved husband. Spring has sprung, so much hope comes with spring. I love the energy of spring.