When Packy the elephant was delivered at the Oregon Zoo in 1962, he made news around the world: the first elephant born in the Western Hemisphere in 44 years! After living to be the oldest Asian male elephant in North America, his death was mourned deeply.

I had the honor of writing and officiating a memorial service for Packy, attended on a rain-soaked Saturday morning by 500 and viewed, via live-stream and since, by more than 73,000. (Scroll down for a video link and the printed memorial program.)

While Packy's pachyderm family filled the neighboring yard, Packy was honored with a Rose Ceremony led by the Royal Rosarians to Beethoven funeral music performed by the trombone section of the Oregon Symphony. Longtime TV news personality Tracy Barry and the Zoo's elephant curator Bob Lee - Packy's lead caregiver for 17 years - brought tears to many cheeks as they eulogized their old friend. Thomas Lauderdale, of the internationally acclaimed ensemble Pink Martini, performed an original new composition for Packy and led a rousing musical finalé of the folk classic Green, Green. 

After everyone joined voices in a customized Litany of Remembrance (see program, below), I closed with the poem We Give Thanks for the Animals, shared with me by Seattle Celebrant Danna Schmidt. The Rosarians formed one final honor guard for Packy, then participants of all ages had a piece of cake in his memory (Packy loved his cake!) and told their own stories.

As The Oregonian reported: "even in death, Packy continued teaching lessons." One dad who brought his two young daughters "saw it as a gentle way to introduce his young ones to the idea of mortality. 'It was a rare opportunity to introduce them to the concept of death in this kind of setting,' he said. 'It was a very tasteful ceremony.'"

Excerpts from my memorial remarks:

We’re joined today in our tears and our tributes by tens of thousands around the region and across the world who have been sharing their favorite Packy stories on-line. 
 
Everyone has a story about Packy. The older among us remember his birth, like Joyce Ritter who was in the 5th grade and called the first elephant born in the Western Hemisphere in 44 years, “the biggest news ever”. She says, “When you were a kid growing up in Eastern Oregon, you dreamed about the day you could go to Portland to visit Packy.”
 
For nearly 55 years Packy inspired millions of children and adults to learn about elephant and animal conservation – a critical mission, with as few as 40,000 Asian elephants remaining in their rapidly vanishing native range. And it’s not just we, his adoring public, who learned from Packy. Conservation scientists attribute much of what we now know about elephant care to Packy. The list of discoveries is as long as his trunk, including breakthroughs that are helping to reduce human-elephant conflict in Asia.
 
With songs, books, Rose Parade floats, and even a beer named after him, Packy has been synonymous with Portland for more than half a century. And so it was only fitting that the Royal Rosarians, the official greeters and ambassadors of goodwill for the City of Portland, claimed Packy as one of their own, knighting him on his 50th birthday as Sir Knight Packy.

The English poet John Donne called the elephant, “Nature's great masterpiece… the only harmless great thing.” As we begin our memorial program, let’s imagine ourselves watching Packy at play, release ourselves from the concerns of the world outside Elephant Lands, and focus our gratitude on the well-lived life of this beloved pachyderm.

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This is the fourth ceremony I've been privileged to create with the caring stewards at the Oregon Zoo. See also Elephants Never Forget (the dedication of their new habitat), Honoring Cultural Survival (the rededication of two historic totem poles), and A Place of Honor (the reinterment of remains of residents of the old county poor farm).

You may have heard of a home funeral – but a funeral for a home? That’s what Nancy knew she needed as her family home was headed onto the real estate market.
 
Known as the “Pink Palace” in her hometown of La Crosse, Wisconsin, this 1880s-era house had witnessed 60 years of Wernecke family life. Nancy and her sister had grown up there, sneaking out of the windows as teenagers. Their parents, Pa and Meme, presided over sprawling additions including an upstairs apartment that housed Grandma Sally and Grandpa Bill, and home decorating schemes later likened to a Mad Men set.
 
Meme’s decorating was part of our childhood history. I got a canopy bed and purple poodle wallpaper; Julie, a bed fashioned in the shape of a stage. I remember the fragrant lilac bush and glorious peonies that lined the front of the garage where I got my first bee sting as I stopped to smell the flowers. I remember how Dad turned your lawn into a skating rink in the winter. He would join us on the rink, hanging on to a wooden chair for balance as he donned his black ice skates.
 
Grandchildren had played for hours around the indoor pool and the park-like yard featured monuments to two of them who had tragically predeceased both their parents and grandparents.
 
Nancy’s distress over losing this family treasure chest and local landmark was compounded by the expectation that any buyer would raze the structures and rebuild, the land considered more valuable than the idiosyncratic house. It was one straw too many on the camel’s back of a family that had recently suffered the deaths of first Pa and then Meme, with Julie’s health fragile, and Nancy still recovering from divorce and newly navigating retirement.
 
For years your walls held our laughter, tears, and many warm memories. Now you stand starkly empty, evoking sadness in my heart, reminding me of all of the important people and experiences that were the very essence and bedrock of you.
 
At the suggestion of a member of a grief program she was attending, Nancy decided to hold a funeral for the family home. She began by writing a letter to the home and assembling a video montage from decades of photographs. As she worked through her memories and associations, we distilled the essence of the home’s presence in their family life to three words that would serve as themes for the ceremony: Foundation. Sanctuary. Witness.
 
On a late spring day she assembled her nephews in the empty home, her niece too pregnant to travel and her sister Julie not well enough to attend. After reciting the Lord’s Prayer out of respect for Pa and Meme’s beliefs, we began with a candle lighting and a calling of names.
 
Think now of those loved ones whom you’ve known here in this home. Parents, grandparents, siblings, nephews, nieces, friends, girlfriends and boyfriends, spouses, caretakers… Let their faces and names come into our presence… let them be part of our circle of gratitude and celebration and farewell… let them know they are welcome and remembered.
 
Nancy read her letter to the home, speaking not only to what had transpired within these walls but updating this beloved structure on the flourishing of the lives nurtured here. After a video trip down memory lane, each person began a solitary walkabout through the many floors and corridors, returning with a representation of something they wished to carry forward from the home, and something they wished to release, written down on slips of paper.
 
Coming back together, the family shared stories and affirmed the legacy of the place that would continue in their own lives. After joining their voices in a Litany of Remembrance, goodbyes were spoken in a ritual of release that drew on the transformative power of fire.
 
And so, as we prepare to say our final farewell to you, dear home, we reflect on your gifts and life lessons. You’ve taught us about the impermanence in all of life. As we’ve left and returned to your sheltering foundation over the years, you have underscored the poignant presence of love in our many relationships. And you’ve witnessed the complicated relationships laced within the tapestry of the lives of all who have traversed the landscape of your rooms and gardens. We offer gratitude to you, dear home, for our many precious memories, for holding our joys and sorrows, for providing the sanctuary and foundation we could return to over the years. As we bid this final farewell, we move forward carrying many cherished memories in our hearts. We thank you for all we can return to draw upon, reflecting on your faithful witness that will forever touch our tender hearts.
 
The ceremony closed with champagne, Meme’s classic Cheez Whiz canapés, and dancing in the kitchen, before the family headed down to the banks of the Mississippi River to release the ashes of the papers they had burned.
 
For Nancy, it was the culmination of years of faithful tending to the grief of the deaths of her parents and other endings in her life, of recognizing the importance of fostering a culture of remembrance in a family that would weather still more tragic losses.
 
She had no way of knowing that as she prepared to hold this funeral for the home, a resurrection was in the works. Buyers came forward who saw not the prospect of the money to be made from the blank slate of this prime property – but, instead, the capacity of this home to provide a foundation, a sanctuary, and witness to the recovery of those who'd been exploited and abused.
 
After preparing to see the “Pink Palace” demolished, the family could now celebrate that it would serve as a shelter to those who needed a home. Just recently, these socially conscious developers announced a new program – the space will serve as a Scholars House for single moms who are in school, offering supportive community and a palatial play space for their kids.
 
“I’m absolutely ecstatic,” Nancy told the La Crosse Tribune. “I consider myself a humanitarian and social activist, and repurposing it that way warms my heart.” 
 
May each of you feel the lightness of release, the satisfaction of a farewell well said, and the richness of four generations of memories. May those memories enrich the lives of the next generation. May you continue to feel the presence of this home and all the life she has sheltered, as your foundation, as a continued witness to the ways you honor your family legacy. And may you continue to find sanctuary in your memories, and most of all, in each other.

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​View photos of the "Pink Palace" through the years and read news coverage in the La Crosse Tribune: 
'Pink Palace' offers jaw-dropping window in time
'Pink Palace' to assume another persona as home for moms in school, their kids

"Never lament casually," said the late, great Leonard Cohen. "And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.”

And so in this week since the election of Donald Trump, I have said very little. I have not joined the nightly disruptions to life-as-usual in Portland - lampooned as "white riots" by Dave Chapelle on Saturday Night Live. 

I'm taking some time to consider the focus and the form of my lament... considering: What happened such that Donald Trump seemed like a good idea to the people who voted for him? Is his election a betrayal of all that landed on these shores to become America, or its fulfillment?

I'm immensely grateful to have had the chance to attend, for three years now, the Orphan Wisdom School, where Stephen Jenkinson troubles us with such questions, including the biggest of all: How do we love a dying culture?

Two days before the election Stephen visited Portland unexpectedly, speaking for an afternoon to nearly 90 people assembled with less than a week's notice. He spoke in and of "the syntax of sorrow, the grammar of the gone, the manner of mortal mystery." Unwilling to collude with "the mania for fixing things that is everywhere," he made the case for increasing our emaciated appetite for "real heartbreak and the tutelage that comes from it."

His plea: To swivel our chair alongside the young people, to try to see what they see. "It's not the world you were born to. That's not coming back. In their eyes is the end of most of what you believe." Be willing to learn the end of all you hold dear, he asked. That's the act of love I'm asking of you.

The night after the election Amber and I took my 9 year-old niece Josie to a neighborhood vigil for loving kindness. Several hundred gathered outside the high school holding candles. Voices of sorrow were witnessed by flames held high. "This Little Light of Mine" was sung, with impromptu verse after verse upholding all that is at risk. The angry face of grief marched by the thousands just a few miles away, shutting down two interstate highways. This gathering we joined sought to elevate kindness.

I recited a poem on "the rhythm of kindness" posted on Election Day by a friend. And when it came time to speak my own mind, I voiced my gratitude for the Water Protectors at Standing Rock, that we would have them in our midst at this time, insisting on a bigger story. 

While I will find other words and actions, one week now after the Election, I stand by what I wrote that first night: Beneath the storm clouds of catastrophe that have gathered over this idea called America since our founding, there is goodness, and beauty, and love, and kinship - and that's what I'm determined to amplify in every way I can.

Don't call us protesters, say the young people​ standing against corporate extraction practices on the Missouri River in North Dakota. We are Protectors.

Unlike the secular political demonstrations I've participated in over the last 30 years, their call is spiritual. Their way of gathering to protect the earth and the water, ceremonial.

"Everybody standing here today is here because someone in your family, one of your ancestors, prayed that you would be here," we were told at a large solidarity event outside the US Army Corps of Engineers today in Portland.

While the Protectors' stance in North Dakota is slowly beginning to attract public attention, it is far from the only front in defense of what was once considered by all peoples, an animate world, a world in which we are all related, human and non-human, seen and unseen.

And it is only the most visible form of prayer for water. In honor of all those whose see their prayers as necessary for the well-being of the world, I'm sharing a recent article from the Washington Post about a 13-day ritual in which dozens of women and girls walk the entire length of the Potomac: "They will speak to the water, sing to the water, and pray for the water."  

"The walkers recite the phrase I will do it for the water in Ojibwe as they hand the water to one another," the article reports.

Organizer Sharon Day, 65, of St. Paul, Minnesota, is asked "if the walkers’ goal is to raise awareness about water pollution. Sure, awareness is nice, she responds — but that’s a paltry goal. The intent of this walk is to speak to the water’s spirit, not to a human audience.

"'All the while, we’re speaking to that water. We’re telling the water how much we care about her,' Day said. 'We really do support the work of other environmental groups. We believe what’s missing from most of this work is the idea that the water has a spirit, and we as spiritual people need to speak to that spirit.'"

..."She doesn’t view her walks as a form of protest. A child of the ’60s, she protested plenty — against the Vietnam War, in favor of civil rights and feminists and lesbians and American Indians. 'I spent my entire life protesting — until I carried that water,' she said. 'It’s not a protest. It’s a movement toward something with love. You’re doing it because you love these rivers.'"

The article also quotes Beth Brent, who planned to participate for a week and ended up walking for two months. "'It’s a prayer. Something about being in prayer every day, it’s powerful.' ...Brent, too, has worked with water cleanup organizations, and found something in the walking that was missing there. 'They keep it in the realm of science and water monitoring. That’s a very colonizing, Western white male way of engaging with nature,' she said, noting that Ojibwe tradition allows only women to carry the water on these walks, with men in supporting roles."

Day was asked, “Auntie, do you really think this is doing any good?” As the article recounts, "The child doubted that the women’s walk could prevent further degradation of the environment. 'The mining companies, they’re so strong. They have so much money,' the girl said.

"Day responded: 'But the water’s more powerful. The water’s more powerful and that’s who we’re speaking to.'"

Read the full article and get involved with #NODAPL Solidarity.

​"I talk to her every day," my friend says, of her mother who died last year. I've always been more tongue tied. Not with the living, usually. But with the dead.

Imagined conversations, remembered conversations - my thoughts are filled with these, exchanges with my father, my Nonna, my friends Bill, Marcy, Kathy, and more.

But to speak out loud - to them, to those who came before them, whose lives collectively, cumulatively, ended up as me - is to render me shy, uncertain, inept.

I used a song to unscrew my jaw when I knew I needed to say certain things to my dad at the memorial I held for him in my backyard eight months after he died. 

"Operator, well could you help me place this call? 'Cause I can't read the number that you just gave me. There's something in my eyes, You know it happens every time. I think about the love that I thought would save me."

Jim Croce (1943-1973) was the sound track to those fifth and sixth grade years when my father left us again and again for an affair he was unable to break off. And then he left for good, moving 6,000 miles away six days after his divorce from my mother was final on my twelfth birthday.

I bought two copies of Croce's Greatest Hits 25 years later when my dad was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer: one for him, one for me. Already unable to do many things for himself, he shrugged his consent when I offered to put it on the stereo. We wept through nearly every song. Those around us were badly discomfited. But I like to think that he and I, in those tear-soaked moments, were speaking the same language for perhaps the first time.

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"The day my second daughter, Marina, was born, was the second happiest day of my life," Tamara Wedin says. "But it was also the second most heartbreaking. She was beautiful and perfect and had the deepest blue eyes you've ever seen...ten perfect little piggy toes...but she was not breathing. She had died two days prior, which we were fortunate enough to watch on ultrasound as her last heartbeat showed on the monitor."

Tamara has channeled her family's agony - grief that came close to taking her down - into a support program for other veterans who've experienced pregnancy loss or the death of an infant.
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One in four pregnancies ends in a loss, according to Tamara, and studies show that for veterans and military families, the risks are even higher. Taps for Babies, now in its second year, is determined to educate others about the very real need for support after a pregnancy loss or infant death, and to make sure veterans are connected to the very best support the community and VA system has to offer. The event, the first of its kind for veterans in the nation, brings together grieving families, non-profit organizations, and VA staff.

At the inaugural Taps for Babies program last year at the Portland VA Hospital, I witnessed two of the most moving sights of my life. The first was the playing of taps for the "babies lost too soon" to military families. A uniformed honor guard, accompanied by the mournful notes of a bugle, slowly and ceremoniously folded a flag and placed it on an empty chair in the front of the auditorium. Those dignified moments were a time outside of regular time, in which the pregnancy and birth traumas experienced by veterans and their families received long-overdue acknowledgement.

Just as moving as the silence that filled the space around the bugle notes were the words we heard from an unexpected speaker. Among the children present on this family-focused day were Tamara's infant son and her older daughter Kiri, who had served as unofficial ambassador to those of us setting up exhibit tables, offering to help organize our displays.

When all the grown-up speakers had finished their remarks and the VA chaplain prepared to close the program, four year-old Kiri approached for the microphone. She told us about her sister Marina, about her death and the ways in which her family keeps her memory a part of their lives. She offered the simple lessons from their experience as a gift of support to others.    

Tamara tells me, "Kiri has already asked me if she is speaking this time. She asks me almost daily how she can help the mommies who've lost their babies. She always wants me to pass on the most profound things."

Tamara welcomes inquiries about the October 28 event in Portland, Oregon and how to get a Taps for Babies program started in your community. Currently working with the Orlando Veteran's Administration on starting a program, Tamara quotes the saying, "There is no expiration on my oath of enlistment." She says, "This program is ultimately about looking out for each other and leaving no one behind." Email: tapsforbabies@gmail.com

While Amber and I are in some ways astonished that we've now been together 20 years, it also feels like the most ordinary thing in the world. Our relationship is our safe harbor, the cozy cove from which we venture forth each day to ride the choppy seas of these troubled times.

That's not to say we take it for granted - we speak of our gratitude for each other, to each other, every day. But when it came to commemorating the day, in this year of big upheavals, we didn't feel the need to make a big splash.

Instead we spent the evening of our actual anniversary at a bird watching class at the Audubon Society. We played hooky for a day earlier this week to visit friends from our MichFest family as they passed through Astoria on the cruise ship they were working. And then we gathered members of our many communities for a low-key happy hour at a local restaurant.

How blessed are we? My godchildren and niece and nephew who set out our photo albums and greeted our guests. College friends who knew me as a 17 year-old. Amber's "tennis wives". Her father's best friend of more than 50 years. My cousin and brother. Former coworkers. Clients. Good people I've met through my Death Café work. Members of our Thanksgiving and 4th of July family. Social justice colleagues. A MichFest sister. Fellow Orphan Wisdom School scholars. The partner of my roommate from 20 years ago who witnessed the very first steps of this new relationship. Such a treat to see those many strands of our lives woven together for a few hours of celebration.

It brought us back to that very first time we asked for our relationship to be witnessed and blessed by our community, when we were five years in - on a day that ended up eleven days after 9/11 and eleven days before my father's death. We needed to be together as a community then, more than ever. Our low-key coming together last night was a reminder of how much we need each other, still.

For every person able to come by to wish us well there were so many more at too great a distance or otherwise occupied with families or their own good works. To know so many good people, to be connected even if only occasionally, is evidence enough of the benevolence in the universe that we feel well buoyed to sail another day.

More on how we got here:
I Now Pronounce You: Our third and final wedding.
My Big (Null & Void) Gay Wedding: Our White Salmon and Lucky Lab ceremonies.
Yes, I'll Marry You: A whirlwind tour through my 26 years of activism for LGBT equality.

"On the occasion of my 80th birthday, please join me for a rite of passage ritual witnessing the beginning of the third stage of my life."

That was the invitation that brought together members of Don Tarbutton's many communities: the neighbors who share his cohousing ecovillage; his colleagues from hospice, chaplaincy, PDX Death Café, and his earlier career in hospital administration; Buddhist sangha and Unitarian Church members; family and long-time friends.

Rather than wait for his death for these loved ones to gather, Don chose to bring them together while alive. But this man who is counted as mentor and advisor to so many didn't want to squander the occasion of his 80th birthday with a mere party. He approached this threshold with the thoughtful discernment and seriousness of purpose for which he's known and loved.

It was time to "celebrate and set aside my life to date and transition into the beginning of a third (and last) stage of life," Don said, "and to communicate that to my family and friends."

Early in our planning process, Don described his vision for the ceremony as celebratory, an opportunity to express gratitude, a time of letting go and transition. He wanted his guests to discover aspects of him that they hadn't know about before, to feel that their contribution to his life and his to theirs had been acknowledged, and to get to meet others who were important to him.

This was a community affair, with many hands chipping in to prepare the space, harvest flowers from the ecovillage garden, and collect contributions for the food bank in Don's honor. On arrival, they wrote words of blessing on paper leaves that festooned a graceful frond of bamboo.

We began with a moving meditation practice that encouraged mindful mingling. After our welcome and an invocation by Don’s dear friend and chaplain colleague, Rick, Don introduced a 30 minute video of his life, complete with his pediatrician's nutritional plan for him, an early report card, Doonesbury cartoons that paralleled his own coming out as a gay man, and home movie footage. Don accompanied the nearly 80 years of photos with an understated narration that shared the key events and insights of his life. 

After six close friends, including Don's partner Jerome, shared their perspectives on Don's gifts, we moved into the heart of the ritual. Rick asked Don to take a vow, and asked us, his community, to pledge our support. In this way, Don consecrated his intention "to let go of or allow to recede into the past, those life experiences that no longer retain active senses of meaning or purpose... and by doing so, open to new life experiences, ones that I seek out or come my way.”

After Don stepped across a threshold of sage smoke, he received a rousing ovation from his community. We moved then into another of Don's passions, Dances of Universal Peace.

As the music began, the room thrummed with appreciation for the gift Don had given everyone present, to feel the bonds of community and humanity strengthened through the act of witnessing his embrace of this place on his life's journey.

When I asked Don if I could share the experience on this blog, he said yes: "I very much want people to know about this toward-the-end-of-life option for a celebration of life with themselves present. For me, I would not have wanted to have missed it!"
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This week I participated in two ceremonies to celebrate new spaces, each a home for innovative organizational endeavors. 

I wasn't able to attend the building dedication ceremony for the Wayfinding Academy, a new college opening next week in Portland's St. Johns neighborhood - but their plan captured my imagination and inspired me to support the celebration with a donation.
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After renovating an old YMCA building, the Wayfinding Academy issued an invitation to the community: "Help us make our house a home." 

Rather than repeating the tired old model of having VIPs cut a ribbon over the threshold, and offering naming rights to only the highest donors, Wayfinding set out to "fill our building with the names of supporters. That way, our students will be reminded every day that there is a community of hundreds of people who believed that they are worth supporting, that this community made the Wayfinding experience possible for them. We want to envelop them with community."

Their donation program offers "rooms and doorways and appliances and toilets (yes, those too)" for donors to claim and name - I funded a light switch! At the dedication celebration, donors signified their commitment by cutting ribbons throughout the building.  As they prepare to welcome their first class of students, they're still a few thousand dollars short of their fundraising goal. Check out this great opportunity to support a community-based model of learning.

The second space-warming ceremony, one I led for a friend's new workspace, was more intimate. Their social change mission requires both an external orientation - to the conditions they seek to change, to the constraints and partnerships of the communities they serve and engage - and an internal focus on their creative process and their life as a team.

As the team stood facing outwards, I asked them to identify a core condition in the external world that affected their work. Turning back to each other, they wrote these words on rocks I'd brought - from racism and poverty to naysayers and devices that distract. Then I asked them to assemble the rocks into two cairns. These cairns can function as a touchstone, a way to keep themselves always oriented to the external context for their work.

Then, turning inward, I passed around a bag of ceramic hearts made by the 18h Avenue Peace House's cottage industry Grief Watch. I invited the team to bring to mind a quality or condition they wanted to foster within their new work space. Each person named a quality they were committed to embodying as they passed their heart to the person next to them. We closed with a round of rose water lemonade toasts and a poem offered in tribute to their work.

Last month, my high school best friend got the call every parent dreads. His child, newly graduated from college and about to start his first professional theater job, killed by a hit-and-run driver.

I was able to offer a small consolation for the stricken family and friends who flew from around the country to Noah's memorial service. Over the years, I've found the call-and-response Litany of Remembrance a useful way, in a secular service, for participants to join their voices together. It both anticipates the many ways the presence of the deceased loved one will be felt, and serves as a collective pledge to keep a place for them as life goes on.

Written by Roland B. Gittelsohn, an American Rabbi who served as Jewish Marine Corps Chaplain during the WWII battle of Iwo Jima, the Litany is often used in group ceremonies, hence the standard refrain, We remember them. With my clients, I suggest the more direct, We remember you.

The most powerful part of the Litany often comes when I encourage participants to add scenarios of their own that are likely to provoke memories, following the standard recital of seasons and emotional states. Specifics range from the teary to the playful. For my friend Marcy, an uncompromising conservationist always guarding against the waste of water, after When we have joys to share, we remember you, we heard When we flush the toilet, we remember you.

Helping a family prepare to bury their 31 year-old son recently, also killed instantly in a road accident, I suggested the idea of a customized Litany. Parents, siblings, aunts and uncles spent an hour or two crying, laughing, coming up with lines associated with precious stories, favorite attributes. The result used only the structure from Gittelsohn's original; every word of tribute represented a collective act of creativity by this devastated family.

I shared their example with my old friend Rich, and he and his family did the same for Noah. He sent it to me after the service with this note: "Please feel free to share it if it can help anyone else."