Rainbow

On a Sunday afternoon this past Spring, Nancy and I sat next to each other on folding chairs in a school gymnasium, surrounded by hundreds of familiar faces. We were at a memorial service for a friend who died suddenly at 54 years old. 

The last time we gathered with our community to honor the memory of someone who died, it was 20 months earlier, for Eli.  Now, it was our turn to show support for the grieving family. We didn’t want to be there, but it was important to be there.

We sat quietly in our seats listening and watching the scenes unfold with the heightened sensitivity of grieving parents.

“I’m thinking of spending a few months in Portugal this summer,” said the man directly behind us talking to an old friend. “I’ve got the time, and I hear the food is fantastic.” 

“Do it,” the friend said. “You only live once!”

We watched our friends mom accept hugs and condolences, smiling and even laughing. I wanted to warn her that she was in shock, and the days, weeks, months and years ahead would be devastating. This was the easy part.

For the next hour, there were blessings, songs, remembrances, meditations, prayers and a video montage. It was heartbreaking and we cried and thought about our friend, and Eli. 

Towards the end of the service, a couple walked onstage and spoke about how they met our friend many years ago through their daughter, Rainbow. They immediately connected and were inseparable. Then, they recited a poem by Mark Nepo called “Adrift.”

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. 

This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief.

Me: (Whispering to Nan) “Rainbow?”

Nan: “Don’t.”

The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the know in my throat.

Me: “That’s a new one.”

Nan:  (giggling) “I just peed a little bit.”

Our shoulders began to shake. We bowed our heads between our legs and clutched hands. The tears streamed down our faces as we tried to swallow the uncontrollable laughter that shocked both of us.

The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger. 

We felt the eyes of our community on us, spectators yet again to our seemingly unbearable pain and heartbreak. Of course they’re breaking down and inconsolable, they were probably thinking. But, how strong and brave they are to show up at all.

In a beautifully compassionate gesture, the man sitting behind me who was headed to Portugal for the food, rested his hand on my back to comfort me. This sent me to another level of laughter I hadn’t experienced in almost 2 years. 

In the very center, under it all, what we have that no one can take away and all that we’ve lost face each other.

It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured by a holiness that exists inside everything.

Nan: “We gotta go. Let’s go. No one will notice.”

Me: “No one will notice? Are you insane?”

Nan: (mouth agape, laughing, but no sound)

We couldn’t leave, so we had to regain our composure. We needed to focus on something sad. That would do it. If we could just think of something sad, something so awful, it would stop our laughter in its tracks.

I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

We thought of him, and kept laughing.

September 2023