Last week I had the extraordinary experience of being sung to as I lay nestled in a recliner surrounded closely by eight members of Portland's Threshold Choir.

"What do you need?" they had asked me as I settled into the chair in the center of their circle. I told them I had just completed four ceremonies and a speaking engagement in the last five days and was heading off to the east coast to lead the memorial service for a good college friend. 

They knew just the songs - in fact, they asked if they could sing me two. No hesitation on my part - Yes, please! 

I shut my eyes and let their voices envelope me. Their gorgeous, strong harmonies sung to me of peace, of knowing at the end of the day that what is done is done, and what is not done is not. I had a strong physical sensation of releasing myself down into a hot epsom salt bath. And of being swaddled, wrapped snuggly in a blanket of tender consolation. I arose replenished. The verb I used as I shared the experience with others was nourished. I felt well fed, well cared for.

I've had the privilege of collaborating with the Threshold Choir on two ceremonies: one, to mark an upcoming birth; one, to honor a life that had just passed. They describe themselves as "women who sing for people crossing life's thresholds: birth, death, sickness, struggle, change, and celebration." 

Invited by Angela Keinholz to participate in Departing Decisions' first annual Party of Thanksgiving, choir members offered to sing to the caregivers and community servants in attendance - not as a performance, but as a presence inviting us to be fully present. As prelude to the simple ceremony of thanksgiving I designed and led for the event, the choir sung us into attention with a gathering song. They led us and held us as a group with several more songs, asking us not to applaud them as entertainers but to join them with our ears, our voices, our open hearts. 

After the rest of our candle lighting ceremony in which we gave thanks for the families we serve in dying and death, all who serve these families, and veterans and other first responders (the gathering coincided with Veterans Day), choir members adjourned to a corner of the room where they offered a personal song bath to those who felt called to receive their gift. 

"Singing with and for each other in this way — accompanying each other through the passage-places in life with presence and song — is an ancient art, a centuries-old tradition with which we’ve largely lost contact, in our modern Western society," says the Portland Choir's Kri Schlafer. "Through Threshold Choir service, we reconnect ourselves to this deep practice. We take in the presence-connection of it as singers, and offer this nourishment to others."

When I told Kri how I'd been affected, she said, "I love that the word nourish came to you. It comes to me like that, too. Since getting involved in the Threshold Choir, I have experienced how, when we give and receive song in this way, the song is its own food group — its own nutrition stream." Another cause for thanks giving.

by Peggy Acott

This autumn I traveled to Colorado and upstate New York to be a part of two intensive writing workshops and study with teachers I have long admired. To be able to do this was made possible by a gift of money that had been held aside for me by my father, who died earlier this year. It has allowed me the wonders of travel to places I have never been and the opportunity to work and study in a realm that is very close to my heart. This is no small thing. My gratitude is immense.

On both of these journeys I took one of the pottery rings that hold a bit of his cremains with me, kept it in a pocket on my walks, and took a photo (a different sort of selfie) that juxtaposed the ring with a view of the landscape that his generosity allowed me to be able to experience.

The most recent trip was to the beautiful Hudson Valley in upstate New York, gorgeous in its resplendent autumn color and panoramic views. I stayed behind for a couple of days after all the other workshop participants had left in order to spend a little more time walking the trails and taking in the beautiful scenery, and to absorb a bit more of the amazing experience of the workshop before returning to my day-to-day life. The first morning “on my own” was November 1 – known as Samhain to my Celtic ancestors – like Halloween, Day of the Dead and All Saint’s Day, the time of the year when the veil between the worlds is thinnest and homage is paid to those no longer on this earthly plane with us. 

I was thinking about all this while fingering the pottery ring in my pocket, while looking out at a valley cloaked in its autumnal beauty, remembering how it was my dad who so loved the changes of the season and taught me to appreciate them; every spring and fall my parents and I would get into the car for a drive (at what was hoped was the optimal time to see the best color) out of the city and into the countryside. 

I took some photos of the ring in the company of moss and rocks and leaves, thinking how much dad would have loved to see this part of the country. It then came to me: I should leave the pottery talisman containing a bit of his earthly remains here. That felt so right and appropriate! Alone on the trail, I walked along in an attitude of what I like to call “body dousing,” in an intuitive search of the right spot.  

There was a massive stone nestled into the side of a hill with a thick cushion of fallen oak leaves off to one side of the trail. An internal whisper said... there. I went off the trail, up behind the rocky behemoth and found, under a ledge that both protected it and hid it from view, a naturally occurring niche in the rock, about the size of my cupped hand. I stood the pottery ring at one side of the hole and it fit as though made for it. I gathered some still green fallen tips of hemlock, a bit of bark with some lichen and a small stone, and arranged them in the niche to create a sort of natural altar. Then I stood back. Turned around to see what the view was from the niche.

It was perfect. It was right. I said my thank yous and felt my prayers, and returned to the trail…teary, but not out of sadness; rather out of a sense of wonder and gratitude that somehow I had felt the right thing to do, that I could give this bit of beauty back to my dad, wherever he now resides. 

The spot is so hidden that it may never be found by another (though if I am ever back that way I will be able to find it again). Or if it is discovered, maybe it will be recognized as a sacred space, and left alone; or the ring will be taken and dad will be able to have another adventure. It doesn’t matter, really, it’s out of my hands. 

But it pleases me, back home in my office with my memories of that time, to be able to envision that bit of him there amongst the falling oak leaves, the yellowing maples and the evergreen pines and hemlocks. It is a beautiful and (at least at this time of year) peaceful place. He would have loved it and I like to think does so now. 

Read Peggy's tribute to her mother, Cast Iron Memories, shared on my blog last November. I was so happy that Holly Swan's Ash & Earth memorial stones captivated Peggy as much as they did me. I've written two posts about the memorial stones I commissioned for my father: Sacred Stones and Bringing My Dad Along.

Sarah’s dying time came in late summer of 2012. She had endured 5 years of cancer treatment for Leukemia. These treatments never brought a cure but they gave her time. She embraced this time with an ever-widening heart that brought a fullness of living that was a gift to live alongside. Her willingness to live deeply and honestly within her experience of suffering gave her more life, not less. Intimacy with what is gave way to the many moments of brilliancy that touched everyone close to her. Living life through the lens of its end reveals a truer sense of preciousness than anything else I have experienced.

Sarah and I had many conversations about death in those five years. They were never easy conversations. There were times when we fell to the ground in sorrow knowing we would likely have to say our goodbyes. Meeting this sorrow together in the open offered a kind of tenderness and love that was so alive and remains powerfully with me now. This intimacy with death allowed us to treasure the simple moments that life offers. Morning tea time on the couch by the woodstove often felt like a feast. The sweetness of time, the warmth of tea and fire and the chance to honor together a new day were gifts and we knew it. Living for a time in this knowing illumines life as the gift it is.

When our goodbye time came in late summer two years ago we savored each moment and made sure to take our time with it. We acknowledged together our last time going to the movies with our kids. Our final outing together was a visit to the green cemetery where Sarah would be buried. We wandered the fields together and she told me she wanted to be buried in the open part of the field because she loved the open. We took time there to sit and read Mary Oliver poems together and choose two that would be read at her memorial service. This slow and deliberate goodbye dance broke my heart wide open. In so doing, it offered me a way to hold all that was to come. 

To love what will not last is food for the soul because it is how it is. Everything I see from my chair here by my garden tells me this is how it is. Next year’s sunflowers will not be the same ones that are here now. The soil of life needs the dying in order to continue nourishing life. The sorrowing heart needs the mysterious force of grief to keep itself alive. We live in a culture that tells us otherwise. That tells us to deny death and skip as quickly as possible over grief. Sarah’s dying time was a gift just as her life was to all who knew her. I thank her every day for teaching me how big love can be and how precious this human life is.