how we shine!

It is Lammas, the cross-quarter point between solstice and equinox. The reign of the Sun King is on the wane. The clients I see at 7pm I now need to turn on the lights for and I’m no longer waking early with the sun. This week, for the first time, I can sense the dark waiting just off stage.

Here, right before summer begins its descent into autumn, I am grieving. In every life, there are key people who, like points of stars making up the zodiac, help create the story of our lives. I’ve had many of these, and I am blessed with a complicated and sparkling tale of a life. One of these stars died in the past week, but just like real stars, her light will still shine long past her death.

I graduated high school early, desperately wanting to escape the confines of my family and Morgan Hill, just south of San Jose, California. Immediately I set out with my friend Diane in her VW van to discover America. I didn’t get very far, just up to the top of the Oregon Coast. In that short trip that took a long time, I discovered one of the people that has shaped my life and one of the places on the planet that helped forge me.

Diane had a phone number and address of one of her mother’s old friends that we planned to look up as we drove up the coast. Diane couldn't remember her, but we had hopes of a free meal and maybe a place to shower. We did eat, we did shower, and we stayed. Diane stayed for over a week and traveled on, I stayed for months. I left to start college in the fall, and I came back during school breaks and in the summer. I was home.

My wonder at meeting Jan was akin to how Harold felt when he met Maude. She was older than my mother, with four children and a Russian husband who’d been Igor in his homeland, but was Harry to all of us. They’d been beatniks in San Francisco, the real thing, and had fled when Ronald Reagan became governor of California. They settled in Cannon Beach, a small sleepy haven made up of people who’d been raised there and the assorted artists, writers, and other riff-raff that come to small beachside towns escaping something. Meeting her, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. Alive.

Jan taught me how to cook a big meal in the midst of chaos, the magic of fresh and local produce, the value of a raging and laughing debate over dinner, and how to always cook more than you need in case a hungry artist suddenly stops by. She taught me the value of having a home where friends feel welcomed and where the art of the spontaneous party is constantly being improved upon.

Living with Jan I learned the movement of the tides ,when to go out digging for clams and where to find the hand-blown glass floats the Japanese current brings in. Over the sink there was always some cuttings taking root, and nature never stopped at her doorway. Her house was full of art, books, garage sale treasures, rocks, feathers, shells, and other assorted found objects. At any point in time at least one room was torn apart in some kind of long-term remodeling project, and evenings were just as likely to end up with a living room of people dancing wildly to a record of African or Cuban drumming as end up with a dinner party taking crowbars to the tiles in the bathroom.

Jan died of congestive heart failure a few days ago. I am flying to Portland on Friday and driving out to Cannon Beach for the weekend. I left a message for her daughter Teter this morning saying that I would help with the memorial if she wanted me to. She called an hour or so later saying she had just listened to the message after deciding with her brothers that they needed help coming up with a ceremony. She laughed, saying how wonderful it was to hear my message and know we are all on the same page.

We are. Jan is gone, but her star shines brightly. Dying at Lammas seems right and fitting for this force of nature I was blessed to know. There are so many incredible friends and family members that have been part of the constellation of my life, that shine on and through me. Some, like Jan, are dead. Some I have lost contact with, or moved out of my life for a myriad of reasons. But still, how they shine! We are made up of our relationships to other beings - out of the same carbon as stars. Soon I will be in Cannon Beach, saying good-bye to Jan, and toasting to her memory with people I haven't seen in decades. You bet I will be looking to the night sky while I am there. We shine, especially in the darkest of times. Oh, how we shine!