Three years ago, at the age of 34, Kim got the worst kind of news. As she wrote on her blog, Aquarius vs Cancer, "I’ve got lung cancer and I’m not very happy about it. It pretty much sucks."

Kim and I met through my dear friend Marcy. When Marcy got her terminal cancer diagnosis she became passionate about connecting with others who were exceptional - exceptional for the early age of their confrontation with mortality, exceptional for their approach to this unbidden "new normal". 

I wasn't too surprised to find an email in my in-box from Kim a few months back: "So. I'm wondering if we could meet up and talk about end of life planning? I'm just trying to get my ducks in a row."

As she'd written on her blog, "I’m the kind of girl who likes to know where I stand at all times. I’m often most uncomfortable when I don’t know what I think or feel on a particular topic or subject."

We met and agreed that I would create a customized set of questions to support Kim in thinking through what she wanted to have happen around and after her death. I lent her my copy of Stephen Jenkinson's slim work book, How It All Could Be, which he describes as "part meditation and part guided study – that begins the deep human project of learning what dying well could be, and what dying asks of us all... for anyone trying to approach dying with soul and intelligence intact."

I worried that my list of questions, coupled with the Jenkinson booklet, might produce paralysis. Not for Kim. When she found it daunting, what did she do? She invited 12 of her closest friends to come to her home on a Friday night for pizza, wine, and a conversation about death. Hers. And theirs.

I was privileged to observe this tender, brave, joy- and grief-filled gathering. They laughed, a lot. They cried. They told stories. They shared answers they didn't know they had. They wondered together. And through it all, Kim presided from a cushion on the floor of her fabulously smart mid-century living room, keeping the group working through the questions she'd culled:

Part 1

• Discussion: What defines a “full life”?
  
• Discussion: What would you do if you had one day to live? What do your answers say about your values, convictions, soul....
  
• How would you describe me?
  
• How would you describe my essence in one word?
  
• Do any songs remind you of me?
  
• Have I taught you anything?
  
• What do you think you will remember most about me? What would be my legacy?
  

Part 2

• Discussion: Do you want an end-of-life gathering? If so, what do you call it?
  
• Do any of you want to speak* at my end-o-life service? *rules apply
  
• I will be cremated. Would people like to dispose of their own bit of my ashes?
  
• Would any of you want to attend my cremation?
  
• Discussion: What happens when you die? When, what, and who do your opinions come from?
  
• What will people miss about me?
  
• Do you have any memorable moments that involve me?
  
• Discussion: When does the transition from “I will die” to “I am dying” happen?
  

A few days later Kim reported "feeling very good about things today." She was busy typing up her notes and said, "It would have been impossible for me to get the same high quality results answering these questions on my own." What struck me most about that night was that Kim had invited us all to begin exercising our grief muscle, to cultivate this neglected capacity in the company of others. 

One more thing about how Kim convened her friends: True to her take on life, she opened the gathering not with a focus on the tragic, but with this playful, provocative point of view on the larger arc of our existence.

"Have you lost your mind?!" That's what Debra Gordon Zaslow's cousin said when Debra brought her cantankerous 103 year-old grandmother home.

Two different contacts from the PDX Death Cafe community alerted me to Debra's story, Bringing Bubbe Home: A Memoir of Letting Go Though Love and Death.

If I weren't leaving town for another sojourn in Nature's arms, I would definitely attend one of Zaslow's Portland readings: 

• Tuesday, July 29, at 7:30 pm at St Mark Presbyterian Church (9750 SW Terwilliger Blvd) 
• Thursday, July 31, at 7:00 pm at Annie Blooms bookstore (7834 SW Capitol Highway).

As you'll see in the clip below, Debra is a professional story-teller. The book promises a riveting account of "volatile caregivers, hormonal teenagers, queen-sized diapers and shadows of the past" in which "the two of them sit soul-to soul in moments of stark tenderness."

As Amber and I face her father's aging (something I was spared by my own father dying young and healthy), I feel passionately that we need stories like this one...

"... the choice to bring death into the home with family, caregivers, and all the ramifications. Zaslow reveals how her grandmother’s shedding of old layers during the dying process created a new bond between them, and how the surfacing of family stories allowed her to see her life in a new context."

The reading, book signing and refreshments are free and open to the public. If you go - or pick up the book, or catch a reading in your own town - tell me what you think.

Sitting down to write this week's blog post, I was reminded of my very first, back in September, 2012. I had just returned from a glorious 50 mile backpacking trip around Oregon's Three Sisters. The photo didn't do justice to the Wizard-of-Oz-poppy-field effect of the blankets of perfumed lupine we'd traversed.

I remember on that trip being filled with wonder at the stupendous natural world in which I'm lucky enough to live. And equally filled with wonder at the work I get to do. I had just completed my first year of work as a Life-Cycle Celebrant and my time on the trail had me savoring the extraordinary privilege of accompanying families and communities through life's most sacred passages.

That Three Sisters trip was in the company of old college friends, Richard and Colleen, along with their daughter Andrea and her fiance Chase. I'd attended Rich and Colleen's wedding in Yosemite Valley 30 years ago, and Andrea had accompanied her brothers and parents to the White Salmon ceremony Amber and I created for our relationship. And so it created something of a magical circle that Annie and Chase booked me to officiate their wedding on that trip.

That sense of magic, of unexpected encounters with what can only be called the Divine, of experiencing life as sacred - coming from my most rational of upbringings, where every dinnertime conversation was fact-checked by the nearby Encyclopedia Britannica - my growing relationship with the unseen world is a welcome revelation.

Rich and Colleen and Amber and I embarked on another 50-miler earlier this month, to the high country of Yosemite. We took in the big splendors, of course, from the six high mountain passes we topped (three over 10,000 feet). But we also marveled at the little things. 

The stone triangle inside a square inside a circle hidden in a grove of ancient trees on a rock ledge in a campsite we'd been tempted to bypass on our last night.

The string of five pack horses who were inexplicably roaming free through the meadows surrounding unnamed lakes above 9,000 feet, no wrangler in sight (we found an abandoned halter on the trail a few miles below the next day).

The rise of the supermoon over lakes awash in reflected alpenglow. A baptismal dip into those same sun-warmed lakes. The heartbeat of life everywhere.

With every step, the anxieties of daily life felt more remote. The wonder of it all, thump-thumping in my chest. 

I returned to a week in which I helped two families say farewell to their beloved dead, supported an extraordinary young woman in preparing for her own death, and celebrated the impending changes in a family about to welcome a new child. The wonder of it all, thump-thumping in my chest. 

When Maddy's husband Carlos died this spring, her chief concern was for their children. Nine and six years old, both on the autism spectrum, they loved their daddy fiercely, just as he loved them. Maddy knew that a regular funeral or memorial service would hold little meaning for them.

"I wanted to have them write messages to their Dad and put them in helium balloons to send to him in heaven," she told me. "But their grandma vetoed the idea - she said it's bad for the birds."

I suggested Bright Eyes Dove Release instead. Maddy love the idea and when I contacted Jadia Ward of Bright Eyes, so did she. Jade and her husband Mike founded their Vancouver, WA-based dove release business in 2011 after what she describes as a "serendipitous chain of events." Jade was particularly touched by the story of these grieving children. As she says, "The rising of a released dove is an excellent way to assist children with the concept of the continuation of the spirit, and to help them visualize continued life."

We gathered on a rain-soaked Monday after Father's Day at the park where the kids and their two best friends had spent so many good times with Carlos. The children had come prepared with messages to their father they had written, per Jade's instructions, on slips of paper the size of a fortune cookie message. After they spent some time getting to know the doves (they had lots and lots of questions for the very patient dove wranglers) they read their messages out loud. Then they watched as Jade and Mike affixed the messages to the dove's ankles. 

They continued to be entranced as Jade and Mike transferred the doves from their traveling coop to the release baskets. Finally, it was time to fly!

Jade invited the children to oversee the opening of the basket lids so they could be personally involved in the release. One bird seemed reluctant to take flight. No surprise, it was the one designated as Carlos's spirit dove. As much as it seemed to enjoy hanging out in the basket under the children's gaze, it finally felt the pull of the rest of the flock and flew skyward.

We all watched as the flock appeared above the trees, headed home with their messages. Once we were ready to begin packing up, Jade called the children back over, with a tone of wonder in her voice. "Look kids! Look what the doves have left for you!" Four perfect white feathers, one each for Carlos's two children and their two best friends.

In the coming weeks or months, Maddy will take Jade up on her offer and travel with the kids to the Vancouver roost to pay the doves a visit, and perhaps reflect further on the day their messages were delivered to their Dad in the spirit world.

With great appreciation to Bright Eyes Dove Release for their generous support of Maddy and her children. I highly recommend this special couple and their uplifting doves for any ceremonial occasion.