When Stephanie imagined her wedding to Jay, she knew she wanted to include her father Ron, who passed away when she was 23.

“I don’t know the exact words,” she told me, “but I feel that he would have loved Jay and would be very happy for me right now.  I want to convey that.” 

As we explored the possibilities, Stephanie shared with me a precious keepsake from her father: a letter he wrote to her while she was in college, a letter he spent most of a workday crafting. With Stephanie's encouragement, I wove excerpts of her father’s letter into their wedding ceremony.

As they stood before their family and friends, a framed photo of Stephanie’s parents sat nearby on a small table with a vase of flowers. After acknowledging those unable to attend the joyous occasion in person, I introduced her father’s letter.

I quoted her dad's words to Stephanie: “I eagerly await to see the person you will become," he wrote. "Whatever you do and wherever you go, I know that you will take the high road. I know you will settle for nothing less. I know that you have a fire that burns within you, something more than the idealistic feelings of youth. You have a fire that drives you to a higher standard of belief and desire. Never, never, never surrender yourself to the lower road. Accept your dreams and then nurture them.”

Turning from the letter to the betrothed couple and their witnesses, I continued: “Today, Stephanie and Jay stand here in fulfillment of Ron’s vision for his daughter, embracing the high road of devotion, committed to nurturing their dreams together.

“In Ron’s letter, he said, ‘I want to tell you how tremendously proud of you I am, Stephanie. You are the best of the best. I am the president of the Stephanie fan club.’"

I concluded this section: “Today, accepting the cosmic baton pass from Ron, Jay stands here, the next president of the Stephanie fan club. May you both continue to feel Ron’s love as a blessing upon you.”

*     *     *

My deep thanks to Stephanie and Jay for allowing me to share the beautiful way they honored the memory of Stephanie’s dad in their wedding.  How have you acknowledged loss during moments of joy, or brought the light of joy into times of sorrow?    

My coming of age story: The day I turned twelve, on December 12th, was the day my period first started, the judge signed my parents’ divorce decree, I got my ears pierced (one became infected), and a lumpy rash spread all over my body. My rites of passage were sex, drugs, and rock and roll. 

I’m amazed by the stupid risks I took and survived.

And so I was incredibly curious and impressed when a thoughtful friend organized a coming of age ceremony to honor her daughter's menarche, her entry into womanhood. I thought my friend was a pretty cool mom.

Recently I called her to have her remind me of the details of the event.

“The first thing you need to know,” she said, “is that my daughter hated it.”

Mother had invited a bunch of women she thought might be interesting role models for her daughter. She installed Daughter on a throne of sorts (an overstuffed chair), a blanket spread in front of her on the floor, a pile of sand on the blanket. Mother smoothed the sand into an even layer and then drew a spiral to represent the journey of life. She asked each guest to place a token of their own journey into womanhood on the spiral as we offered Daughter our stories.

I can still see Daughter's face: shy, forebearing. I realize now that she was mortified.

As word of this ceremony had spread among Mother’s friends, such was the hunger for a re-do of their own unremarked coming of age that women showed up who had never even met Daughter. Here was a group of near-strangers discussing anatomical details –worse, the changes, the very private changes, occurring in her own body – while she was forced to sit and listen and smile.

Daughter and Mother have discussed this awkward incident many times in the decade since. In fact, Daughter agreed to help Mother organize a coming of age ceremony for a young woman who had recently lost her mother to cancer – but she agreed only on two conditions.

First, invite only the closest circle of adult women who actually have a relationship with the young woman. This ensures the guest of honor – and not the ceremony itself – is the focus.

Second, avoid any mention of the anatomical details of puberty!

The ceremony – a redo for both Mother and Daughter, a circle of support and remembrance for a motherless adolescent – was, I am told, a huge success.

Last week I wrote about the memorial service I created for my father six months after he'd died without a funeral (see below). Years later I realized that ritual wasn’t, first and foremost, a memorial to him.  We had remembered him well in that ceremony, certainly. But that night was really about marking a rite of passage for me. 

It was about my becoming fully and finally a fatherless daughter.

My entire life had been shaped by losing my dad. I lost him first to his work (as an ob-gyn, he spent most of my birthdays attending the births of other children). Once I’d started grade school, he was absorbed in a secret affair that, once revealed, triggered two years of tormented back-and-forth between his lover and the nuclear family unit of me, my sister, and our mother. 

My parents divorced on my twelfth birthday. Six days later my father and the woman who would become my stepmother moved 6,000 miles away, across a continent and an ocean, in a self-imposed exile that lasted twenty years.

By the time my dad was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, I had so much practice in losing him that I knew how I wanted to do it this final time. I spent eighteen months as his part-time caregiver. It was the best our relationship had ever been. When he died, I felt incredibly grateful for the time we’d had together.

How I made peace with my father and my journey to forgiveness is a story for another post. But the ceremony that evening in my backyard when we were flooded with bright white light was the capstone of that process. As I said that night, “This ritual is about letting go of the bargains, the needs, the wounds. It's about embracing the eternal – the love that does not die, the lessons learned that leave their mark, the space in which we hold each other that transcends our physical beings.”

It was during my training as a Funeral Celebrant ten years later that I realized that there was more to say about my father. Not who he was to me, in his presence and his absence. But who he was as a man. As so I wrote him the eulogy he’d never had. I looked back through photos and reread the written remembrances I had solicited from my sister, his sisters, former patients, and family friends in the months after his death. I worked to capture and convey his essence.

On the 10th anniversary of my father’s death, I invited several friends back to my house for a simple remembrance ceremony. Once again, I laid out my father’s artifacts. I queued up the Jim Croce song. This time, I shared his eulogy. Then I emailed it to my stepmother, my mother, my sister, my aunts.

Two weeks later, on what would have been my father’s 75th birthday, I traveled up to Washington State where he had lived his last days to meet up with my stepmother and some of their old friends. We took a couple of bottles of champagne to my dad’s favorite wetlands, walked out on the boardwalk in the setting autumn sun, and toasted my father’s memory.

At the close of the memorial ceremony I created for my father, my backyard was flooded with bright white light.

My father had died just two weeks short of his 65th birthday after an 18-month confrontation with cancer. He didn’t want a funeral, according to his wife, my stepmother. She was exhausted and didn’t want one for him either. But I knew I needed something.

Six months after his death I conducted a ceremony in my backyard. I planned it to coincide with a cross-county visit from my mother, who had been divorced from my father for over 25 years but needed to say her final good-bye.

A friend helped me pick the day of the week and time:

• Tuesday, June 4th. Mars rules Tuesdays and governs conflict, hunting, surgery, lust, physical strength, courage, politics, debate, athletics, war, contests, and rituals involving men. (That all sounded like my Dad – except the hunting.)
• 9:00 PM – the 1st lunar hour. Saturn rules the 1st lunar hour after sunset on Tuesdays and governs building, the elderly, funerals, wills, reincarnation, destroying diseases, terminations and death. (Yes.)

We prepared the ceremonial space in my backyard (sweeping it, sprinkling water and salt for purification) and cast a circle (laying out twelve rocks, four for the cardinal directions and eight to complete the circle).

My guests processed through my dining room where I had laid out photos and artifacts from my Dad’s life – the veteran’s flag, the charcoal gray cashmere beret I’d bought him after his brain surgery, his beloved Acrostic puzzles. Among these items were index cards on which I’d written words to evoke my father’s spirit: Devoted doctor. Strong. Generous. Intelligent. Athletic. Loved good food, opera, fine wine, sweets and ice cream. Quick witted – funny. Accomplished. Driven. Loved.

We entered the backyard in early twilight and took our places in the circle. A friend led a short guided meditation to ground and center our energies before lighting the tiki torches.

As an invocation I placed a portion of my father’s ashes on our small altar table and played the Jim Croce song, Operator (“Oh would you help me place this call…”). I called the names of family not present: his wife, his sisters, my sister, his deceased parents. Other participants spoke the words describing my father I had written on the index cards.

I brought out copies of the memory book I had composed from the photos and stories solicited from family members and friends. In the presence of the circle, I bound each copy with a wide raffia ribbon.

Then I read aloud the things I needed to say to my Dad, written on a pilgrimage to the coast a few days earlier. We listened to a Bonnie Raitt's Circle Dance: “I’ve been too faithful all my life/ It’s time… to let… you go.” 
By the light of the tiki torches, my mother and I each wrote on slips of paper things about my father, our relationship to him, and his passing.  Those we wished to release we let burn in a bowl. Then, in a separate bowl, we burned those we wished to carry forward. These remains we mixed with my father’s ashes in a Mexican terra cotta planter shaped like a turtle. I nestled several small succulents in the soil and ash. 

Then my friend led a closing meditation. Just as at sunset he had asked us to circle our energy around and around and down, to ground and center us in the opening of the ceremony, he now asked us to close our eyes and circle and circle our energy around and around and – up! 

“Raise your hands into the air and RELEASE!” 

As we threw our hands into the air and opened our eyes, the backyard was suddenly flooded with bright white light. 

We looked at each other stunned, speechless, then laughing, giddy, as we realized that we had tripped the motion detector for the security light.

We rose, and drank, and feasted together.
                                                             
*     *     *

For more on my journey with my father: How I found Forgiveness, marking the 10-year anniversary of his death, the memorial stones created from his ashes, and the belated eulogy I wrote for him.