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.

*          *          *
​
​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

Endings don't seem to be waiting for December 31st this year. After a 12-month cycle that saw the deaths of three in my inner circle, Amber and I traveled to Tucson this month to close a 13-year chapter in our lives.

It actually started back in 1999 when, on the uncertain brink of Y2K, we decided to sublet our houses and travel the country in a 1973 motor home we named Betty. Our originally-planned six months turned out to be not long enough. With summer gigs in Michigan and long-distance contract work, we managed to live in Betty for 18 months, until my father's brain cancer diagnosis called us back to the Pacific Northwest.

We spent the winter of that magical sojourn on some women's land just west of Tucson's Saguaro National Park. The Sonoran Desert was endlessly fascinating to us, with its idiosyncratically animated cactus shapes and all manner of bird and animal life: quail, coyote, rabbit, dove, owl, lizard, javelina.

After my Dad died and we resumed "life as normal" back in Portland, the desert continued to call our names. We returned on vacation and noticed many houses featured casitas out back. We contacted a realtor and not too much later, we'd sold Amber's condo in Portland and bought a three-bedroom house in Tucson with a separately-fenced, one-bedroom off the alley that became our beloved retreat for the next 13 years.

Not exactly a "vacation home" - no pool, no view. But the sky was nearly always blue. The plant and bird and animal life, abundant. The rental income from the main house pretty much paid for itself. Every time we visited, we enjoyed old favorite places. Every time we visited we discovered something new. ​We joined, most years, with over 100,000 others in the remarkable All Souls Procession, first memorializing my father with a personal altar, later processing in Marcy's nightgowns five months after her death.

But in this time in which we all must learn the ending of things, it was time to let go of the responsibility of owning property 1,500 miles away. We sold the place easily and booked a flight to go down to clear out our humble but cherished casita.  

​While I knew it would be sad to say goodbye to our sweet little place, I didn't expect to have so many endings wrapped into this one. ​

"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.

"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!"
​​

There are few sounds that pierce the heart like the sound of grief - a sound seldom heard in our otherwise cacophonous contemporary culture. I wrote about that silence last year in my account of a Dagara grief ritual led by Sobonfu Some. 

Last week, the sound of grief ruptured the quiet of our Sunday morning: my spouse Amber reacting to the call from the hospice house. Her Dad had just died. 

The days leading up to and following his last exhale were punctuated by so many clear notes of grace. One of those came in the form of a glossy, black bird. 

On Wednesday morning, at the time Dean's body was being cremated, Amber and I entered the wet green womb of the Portland Audubon Sanctuary, where Dean had volunteered for 17 years. On this rain-soaked weekday, we had the place to ourselves, it seemed. As we stepped down the slick trail among the old-growth conifers, descending to the rush of Balch Creek, we noticed a large enclosure. A sign told us it was the home of Aristophanes, the resident raven. But Aristophanes was nowhere to be seen.

We reached the creek and took shelter in a grove of giant trees, pausing to speak aloud some words to Dean. After a while we found ourselves drawn down the path to a small pond bordered by a wooden pavilion. As we entered the open-sided structure, facing the pond, we became aware of a slender man with waist-length braids, behind us, bending to the ground just off the deck. On his heavily gloved arm was a large blue-black bird: Aristophanes.

This long-time Audubon volunteer who spends every Wednesday visiting with the eight year-old rescue bird was gathering wet leaves to tidy up the large glops Aristophanes had left on the floorboards. Unaware of the reason for our visit, he began to weave a gentle spell that held us there for story after story about this remarkable bird.

In cultures throughout history Raven has been seen as a mediator between life and death. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss theorized it was this attribute that propelled both Raven and Coyote to mythic status. A quick tour of Wikipedia finds Raven featured in important stories of the Greeks and Romans; in the Talmud, the Bible, the Quran, and among medieval Christians; among Nordic and Celtic cultures; in Siberia, North Asian, and South Asian lands (where the Raven still serves as the national bird of Bhutan); and among the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.

As a symbol of death in European cultures, Raven has become associated with sadness, a bad omen. But in Africa, Raven is seen as a guide. In China and Japan, Raven is a messenger of the gods representing the light of the sun. Unlike the modern West which dichotomizes life and death into mutually exclusive realms, several indigenous cultures' creation stories depict Raven as both creator and trickster.​

Our Audubon guide focused instead on his wonder at the intelligence of this bird, its neocortex proportionately thicker than a chimpanzee's. The raven not only uses tools, it makes them. Their communication skills, we're learning, are remarkably complex.

During his keeper's narrative, Aristophanes kept up a steady litany of gurgles, clucks (sounds like "tock!"), and croaks. This unexpected cross-species duo, showing up in this place of ancient beauty, on this most sacred of mornings, provided a glimpse of the power of the mythic imagination to connect us to worlds outside the limits of our physical existence.

Over the past week, as my father-in-law entered his dying time, I prepared to introduce the Death Talk Project, with its logo (seemingly coincidentally) the sociable raven.

As the life-force began to ebb from this deeply decent, loyal man, I was reminded with my every breath how each grief touches the ones that came before. With me in the room with Dean: my own father, whose brain cancer showed up 16 years ago this month. My dear friend Marcy, whose birthday we'll mark on March 25th without her. The other beloveds, mine, and those of the clients I serve. And beyond them, the names we'll never know, the generations of life in all its forms whose deaths made my existence possible.

All of them here, as memories, as felt presence, in the molecules we breath and the food we eat and the ground we stand on. In what John O'Donohue calls the space between us. I created the Death Talk Project to serve and support that space between us. Please let me know what you think.

Since mid-May when I left my friend Marcy's bedside expecting her to die the next day, and got on a plane bound for my family's ancestral home in Italy, my life has been soaked in intensity: joy and sorrow, the simultaneous uplift and ache of conscious endings. 

The work for Freedom to Marry that I've done part-time for nearly 5 years: done. The women's music festival I've been a part of for nearly 20 years: I leave tomorrow for the 40th and final Michfest. Every day I steward a small piece of Marcy's legacy as I prepare for her public memorial celebration later this summer, as I help make arrangements for her gravemarker, as I tell her story - our story - to the bereavement chaplain and the friends who are good enough to want to hear about it as often as I need to speak about it.

In the midst of these endings, I've been privileged to mark other milestones, no less rich in meaning: the 12th birthday of my goddaughter Ava, and the 80th of my father-in-law, Dean.

For the first time since I was present for Ava's birth, I missed her birthday (I was in Italy). I'm not sure 12 is a big deal for her, but it was for me. On my 12th birthday (on December 12th) I got my period for the first time, and my parents got divorced. The self-inflicted risky behaviors that serve as a proxy for the coming-of-age rites we no longer observe in our dominant culture began, for me, way too early.

Beholding my innocent Ava and imagining her now, going through what I went through at that age, brings my heart into my throat. How to protect her childhood while acknowledging the threshold on which she stands? How to honor her innocence while preparing her for the wider world?

I proposed to her moms that they allow me to take her on a trip out of town, the first without them, outside the protective bubble of their mini-van. We took the train to Seattle and bumbled our way around town on public transportation. We did a bunch of fun kid stuff - the Space Needle, a Star Wars costume exhibit, making fantasy maps at the Experience Music Project. And we had a few brief forays into topics that belong to the world of adults.

One the other end of life's fragile cord, Amber's dad turned 80. The lead-up was fraught with emotion for my spouse, an only child, as she reviewed a lifetime of family photos and plotted how to celebrate her dad. We made a book of images from his life going back several generations (including the gravestones that he and Amber have been visiting in cemeteries from Camas, WA to Roseburg, OR); presented him with magazines from the week of his birth, one for each decade; and threw him a party at our home.

Life is full and rich and good.

It's not everyday that I get to shake the Vice President's hand. Just another surreal moment in the cascade of intense endings pouring through my life this summer.

For the past 5 years I've worked part-time, behind the scenes with Freedom to Marry, the campaign to win marriage equality nationwide. Our Supreme Court victory on June 26 was the culmination not just of thousands of people's blood, sweat, and tears over decades - but for me, personally, of a through-line of activism that began in 1988 after I'd just come out as a lesbian and volunteered on the first of a string of anti-gay ballot measures. (See links below for more on my personal journey.)

Oregon has faced more anti-gay initiatives than any other state - so it's no coincidence that lessons and political operatives key to our national victory emerged from our local experience here - messages that opened America's heart and movement heros like Thalia Zepatos, Roey Thorpe, and Thomas Wheatley. After co-leading the successful campaign to defeat the third hateful OCA ballot measure in 1994, I stepped off the front-lines. I'm grateful to Freedom to Marry, and Thalia in particular, for providing me with the opportunity to continue to contribute while pursuing my work as a Celebrant.

The struggle for full LGBT equality is far from over. But the incredible team that dedicated itself to achieving this astonishing win on marriage is done. On July 9th Freedom to Marry celebrated with the Vice President and 1,000 key activists and donors. The next day, we met as a staff for our final, farewell retreat. We spilled out stories of the difference the work had made in each of our lives and the lives of countless others, along with tears, disbelief, pride - and most of all: love.

Here's a beautiful 6 minute video that recounts this remarkable piece of history that was years in the making but finally arrived, as President Obama notes, "like a thunderbolt".

Earlier posts on our years living with and working against marriage discrimination:

• I Now Pronounce You: In which my friend and colleague Thalia Zepatos officiates our latest and last 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.
  
• The Perfect Bookend to a Long Chapter: Kelly and Dolores sharing their role in history with their children.
  
• Old Married Couple Legally Weds: Another couple navigates the question of how to cross the new legal threshold for the marriage they'd already celebrated.
  

In the months preceding Marcy's death, I really struggled with my mood. Actually, that was true off and on for the entire five years of Marcy's life with Stage IV ovarian cancer. It's much too soon to write of those struggles - but not too soon to mark some of the turning points.

One came this spring when I recognized myself as a caregiver. I'd been accompanying Marcy to most of her major medical appointments since the very first meeting with an oncologist, had been there for her first chemo treatment, had flown to Philadelphia to help her enroll in a clinical trial; I'd received near-daily emails from her, many asking for help of one sort or another; I'd immersed myself in conversations about death and learning death care and bereavement practices in part to serve her and our shared community. I cared, desperately. And I gave a lot. But I'd never thought of myself as a "caregiver".

Then one day at a Death Cafe event, Jessica Thomas asked if I would help recruit participants for her doctoral research with caregivers. "Yes," I said - "but I'd like to enroll. I'm a caregiver." With that simple recognition (and a bit of paperwork) I entered into her study, a four-week practice of mindful photography. 

Each Monday I set aside time to take a photo after meditating; later in the day I looked at the photo and wrote a short journal entry. I discussed the experience with Jessica in a brief weekly phone interview, and a longer interview at the completion of the four weeks. These reflections helped me realize how the practice had added more spaciousness into my busy, often stressful days, a moment of beauty and relaxation that was "just for me." I knew I was unlikely to have taken those moments for myself if I hadn't committed to the practice for the study. One of the most useful aspects was in actually identifying myself as a caregiver in need of supportive practices.

Thus it was a no-brainer for me to say yes when Lisa Bordner offered me a treatment. I knew she did somatic work with people in hospice and caregivers but I hadn't paid much attention to the modalities she offered. 

"I’d like to offer you a Shirodhara session, my gift" she wrote in one of the most welcome emails I've ever received. "I’ve just had a sense of how much is up for you lately, and thought it might be a sweet reprieve. And I know how much you put out there in the community and in the world, and would love to give back as you do for so many." 

Thus I found myself on a massage table positioned under a copper cauldron that slowly and steadily bathed my third eye with sesame oil over the course of 40 minutes. It's an ancient Aryuvedic technique that Lisa describes as "one of the sweetest, simplest ways of nourishing the entire nervous system so the mind can quiet and body drop down and experience a sense of deep relaxation." It worked.

I went gently home and laid in a recliner in the shade in our backyard and entered the space of preparation for Marcy's death that had eluded me in the prior weeks. The next day, after working out and my weekly meditation sitting, I went to Marcy's house. I didn't come home until 5am the next morning. That day, the day after that sweet sesame oil had opened a door inside my heart, was Marcy's last day alive. The rest of the week was bathed in grace and love and broken-hearted sorrow.

Images from my weekly Mindful Photography practice. 

If you're interested in Jessica's study, here's her call for participants.
To contact Lisa Bordner about her somatic practices: [email protected].

"I'm feeling complicated," a Facebook friend posted recently. When it comes to my birthday, I know how she feels.

No matter how incredibly blessed I am in my life on so many levels, there are always some "It's my party, I can cry if I want to" moments when the calendar turns to 12/12. The echoes of the past pound loudly in my ears: my first birthday, spent in an isolation unit of an Army hospital in Germany; my 12th, the day of my parents' divorce; four years ago, the two trips to the ER with a ruptured disc in my neck.

This year the traumas of birthdays past were met by fears of the future. I had marked the entrance to my fifties two years ago with a ceremony in which I asked "for the courage and the grace to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of my own unfolding."

I am loving, for the most part, where the current is taking me. I just hate what it's doing to my skin.

In my mail box this last week arrived the latest issue of my college alumni magazine featuring a truly lovely profile of my current work, with an equally lovely full-page, nearly life-size photographic portrait - the first photo I've seen in which I look my age: neck wattled, eyelids droopy, skin coarse. (Believe me, the digital version glosses over what's revealed on the heavy matte page.)

I feel humiliated by my vanity; humbled by my unexpected age-phobia. I know how extremely fortunate I am to enjoy good health and vitality as so many around me suffer severe physical afflictions; to be in a loving partnership of 18 years while so many live lonely; to have such meaningful work in my life, and to be so recognized and appreciated for that work.

But "Facing the End" remains complicated. I may talk about it every day. But that doesn't mean I don't recoil to a deeply fearful place when I contemplate my mother's death, or Amber's, or Marcy's. Or look with confusion and aversion on the impact of time and gravity on my skin.

And so, on my birthday, I honored the complicated parts with some tears, in the sturdy embrace of my beloved. And I celebrated the many blessings of my life with a succession of sweet moments of connection, culminating with a raucous performance of an epic birthday play written, acted, and produced by Ava (11), Bennett (newly 8); Josie (7 for two more months), and Jules (nearly 3).

Later, as Amber and I sat by our fireplace for a wind-down round of Bananagrams, I realized the complications had washed away. I felt bathed in love and gratitude.