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Two months ago I attended a four-hour memorial for a dearly beloved ex-boyfriend, who died too young of brain cancer. I went with the man I was seeing at the time. The day before the event, we looked at the invitation and both thought, “four hours?” It turned out, four hours… was barely enough, and ultimately, exactly what was needed.

 

The event was not held in a church, but in a beautiful public building designed by Julia Morgan. There was food, there was wine…but very little eating and drinking took place.

 

At the front of the high-ceilinged room, to the left of the podium, was an old-fashioned, home-movie screen, playing a stunning slideshow of photos, submitted by many of those in attendance and by those who could not attend. Faded childhood portraits with siblings, shirtless feats on rock faces, wedding joy, goofy poses in Halloween wigs, triumph on a roof in paint-covered overalls, hugging his kids… deep blue eyes staring out from each shot. Everyone was mesmerized by it. It was impossible not to watch over and over, as the fullness of his life unfolded – none had ever seen all of it before – we could not look away.

 

Besides the few scheduled speakers, anyone who wished to was invited to come up to the podium and say something, to sing, to laugh, to cry, to take too long, to stumble, to be gloriously eloquent, or deeply not, to claim extreme connection/importance and unique value in their relationship with him, to honor him, to share joys, difficulties, surprises.

 

There was no talk of God. My current boyfriend found that to be lacking. He is, admittedly, a man of the cloth. His comment got me thinking, though. This was not the ‘scarves and miracles’ set, I tried to tell him. The people attending were mountain climbers, Antarctic tour guides, carpenters, public defenders, independent artists, stoners and ex-stoners, rock climbers. It was a gathering, a roast, not a search for or naming of the holy. There was no illusion that we would find meaning in his leaving. Or ask the Universe for that meaning. And yet, the sacredness of this man’s life was more fully present than I have ever felt at a more religious memorial.

 

Person by person, some skillful, some unskillful – both were required to get the whole picture – the mosaic of the man came into view. Who he was to each, and therefore who he was to the world.

 

I have never attended such an effective memorial. When I say effective, I mean that afterward, I felt, “Yes. That man’s life mattered in the world. In all these myriad and specific ways, and in the way I knew him, too.” I felt I could both fully let him go and never forget who he was.

 

If the whole thing had been more “appropriate” – shorter, a clergyperson giving a sermon, we’d never have heard his dear friend and old roommate go on and on; keep telling another story and another, so that many of the listeners were ready to say, “okay there, buddy, that’s enough.” But it was not enough.

Because we sat through someone unable to stop telling, as if by standing up there for 20 minutes he could bring those moments back, bring his friend back – he’d never, after all, have a chance to rehash them with him, so he had to explain them, in detail, and fully, to us, so we’d Get It…. We did, Get it.

 

So that when the last speaker, a man used to giving summations to juries, left us with an unforgettable and familiar final image, we had all the prior sharings – the poorly planned and the mumbled, the stories of first meetings, the couples therapy gone awry, the song written just for him, the messy, the funny, the artful, the sweet…we had, collectively, delivered our beloved friend on to his next pathway through the Universe. With a kind of joyful nudge – of bewilderment, humor, and awe.

 

I left that day with a complete certainty that every person’s life really matters. This man was not famous; he was not rich; he was not about to break onto the scene with a new invention, song or product; he was simply and utterly himself. I am grateful to have known him as I did.

 

Thanks to that imperfect, beautifully planned, four-hour hangout, we did not need to ask God anything. We knew. Our individual and collective love, was God.

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