What sticks with me is that we were all hugging like we meant it. Which, if you think about it, is actually all too rare in this life. You know, there’s too many of those other kinds of hugs: the sideways/half-hug, the shallow hug where you bodies don’t really meet save for the pat-pat-pat on the back. Today was full of the other kind (the best kind): the squeeze where you can tell that neither one of you wants out of this thing; the hug that says, ‘come and visit me soon and I really mean it, I’m not just saying it to be polite;” the hug that says I love you and I miss you. The hug that says there are some things about today that were really hard and I’m glad that we are all here to get through this together.

We sat under the canopy and threw flowers into a hole in the ground. We told stories. We cried. We laughed. But mostly we hugged.

We sat in church. We sang hymns and worried about our children making too much noise and stood around and made small talk with friends of the family that we only vaguely knew. And we hugged.

We reminisced. We sat at the longest table I’ve ever seen and ate dinner by candlelight in an orchard backyard, barely registering the food arriving because we were all so present in the moment. Struck by the beauty of the scene, by the passion of our conversation, by the teasing and the good conversation and the love ever-present.

All the while, the silent but not unforgotten presence, the reason that we were all there together.

We didn’t want it to end. I’d like to think that we will all see each other soon….I don’t know if that is so, but until then? I’m as happy as one can be for having lost a loved one. It helps me remember, when we are all thrown together, what it means to have a family like this one–even as disparate as our lives and histories are–a family full of stories and memories and shared pasts. Faces that we can look upon and see, suddenly and strikingly, as if peeling the layers upon layers of an onion, the faces of the adolescent, the child, the infant.
It is a time in which we can know and be known, a time where we truly are. A time and place where we don’t have to tell our story because it is already there, written upon the hearts and minds of the others.

It is easy for us to think that these others aren’t mindful of us and our lives but, if we take a moment to think about it, we realize that we do think of them, even as far away as they are (in distance–they remain in our hearts and minds) and they do the same with us. If I had a dollar for every family member this week who has told me “I was reading your blog the other day…..” (and yet has never, ever commented which isn’t wrong, but just surprising to me to know that they have been, at least on some occasions, reading my words. It gives me a secret thrill!). Please, family, let me know that you are out there, reading these words and being a part of my life and rest assured–really and truly–that I think about you, keep up with your Facebook posts and stories and updates handed down from person to person until it reaches me that you’ve graduated school or have moved or your work is going great or even that you are having a hard time or whatever it is. I love you, even across this great divide. Thanks for the conversations, for the smiles and hands clasped in greeting and commiseration, but thank you, most of all, first and foremost, for those hugs (the ones that show me that you really mean it). There aren’t enough of those, not ever. Come visit me. I mean it. I love you and miss you. I really mean it.