when they ring those golden bells for you and me

It was in the shadow of Katrina that I started working in funeral service, stumbled my way into a position because I had a skill set that filled a need and I was available yesterday. In those days and weeks that followed, I witnessed incredible acts of kindness and caring from death care professionals who stepped into crisis and did what they do best: tending to the living while caring for the dead.

I saw the the caliber of men and women they are, time and again. In ways large and small, I watched them do extraordinary things for the communities they served.

See, when the waters receded in New Orleans, they left behind the dead. Some of those dead were never claimed, took up space in a warehouse-turned-halfway-house between this world and the next. It was funeral service that said oh no, this cannot be. It was funeral directors in New Orleans, along the Gulf Coast, throughout the country who pushed for a place for those dead to rest. They organized and fundraised and pressed and pushed, made plans for a memorial that reflected the same swirling lines of the hurricane that brought them all together.

In August 2008, just weeks into a new role, I watched funeral directors step up to the plate again. In the shadow of Gustav they gathered at the end of Canal Street, dark suits and white gloves, pristine despite the bright sun and heat that shimmered off the paths leading into the old Charity Hospital Cemetery.

It was supposed to be a full jazz funeral, but with the threat of another big storm the service was scaled back. At one point there was talk of canceling altogether, but these souls had waited long enough. From the warehouse that held them to the memorial where they'd rest, a solemn procession. At the gates of Charity Hospital Cemetery, funeral directors and first responders, priests and politicians, a jazz trumpeter and a few curious onlookers gathered together to lay to rest the remains of 86 of Katrina’s dead who had nowhere else to call home.

When the last casket had been placed, the politicians spoke. I don't remember what they said.

At 9:28 a.m. the bells of the city rang out, call-response, marking the moment when the levees failed. A man-made tragedy that only seemed to spiral in the days and weeks and months ahead.

August 2008, three years after the waters receded, and the wounds left behind were still angry and raw. Ken Ferdinand played “Amazing Grace,” a lone trumpeter's song carried off in the wind. We held our breath, how sweet the sound, and hung on to hope and prayed for healing for the city and her people. Hope and heartache so often go hand in hand, it seems, and the city knows both too well. But you can't keep New Orleans down.

When I think of the horror and devastation of 10 years ago, I can't help but also think of the power and beauty of that service now seven years past. A chance for closure, a healing, grace manifested because the men and women who worked with death on an intimate basis understood how important it was for those souls to have a place to rest. How important it was for the rest of us to have a means, an outlet, for our grief.

For who and what we lost, in the storm and in the days after, for the men and women who created a communal space to give voice to that loss, for ten years of healing and so much work left to be done - for all this, I pray.

I remember.

don't stop 'til you get enough

 Generally speaking, I think advice is worth the paper it's printed on. Most of the people giving it are entirely unqualified, and most of the people who need to hear it have deaf ears.

Come Sunday, it's seven years. It's not a remarkable amount of time, but it feels like forever and a moment. Sometimes I amuse myself by reading all the columns that tell you what to look for in a partner, all the secrets to being happily married, to surviving kids. 

The thing is, no two marriages are alike. No two anythings are.  Even identical twins, mirror genetic images, are their own people from the moment they draw their first breath. Hell, probably before. So trying to pretend that there are a set of rules easily followed that lead to happily-ever-afters seems disingenuous at best.

The truth is, I ignored all the advice I give to other people.  He met my kid too soon, we got engaged too soon, we got married before we'd asked all the difficult questions.  Don't stay together for the kids, they say, and yet honestly? I'm not sure if we hadn't gotten pregnant practically on our wedding night that we would have survived a really tumultuous and hard first year.  

We are both stubborn and headstrong and difficult in our own ways, and we gritted our teeth through that year and the next, and the next.  Truth be told, I'm not sure we hit our stride til we did the unthinkable: abandoning everything and everyone we knew, the entirety of our support system, to take a leap of faith and move in search of a better life. 

We've fought hard for it, and each other, and in between all the hard moments and desperate moments I found this man who is my partner, who is my straight man, who is my best friend, who I love a million times more than the day I pledged to spend the rest of this life with, and whatever’s after.  I am whole on my own.  I was never in search of another half.  But the pieces of me that were stretched thin and worn in places, the parts that were broken and bruised - they are whole today because he's next to me.

I am many things, but mostly I am grateful.  For today, and the day before it, the hard days and the plain days and the beautiful days and the best days.  I don't believe anyone enters into a union believing it's going to end, that it's a passing thing, that this person they have pledged their life and love to is not the one they will grow old with. It happens, though. 

I don't know what tomorrow holds. I am not in a position to predict the future and the adventure is in the unraveling so I'd just as soon not.  So I hold on tightly to today, and the series of todays that led us to this one, that wrote our shared history in blood and sweat and tears and smiles and a whole lot of baby crap. Literally.  Today is another day that is ours, together.  That's a great day.

The one piece of advice I ever held onto has been repeated to me more than once by a good friend of ours, the priest who married us. Reflecting on the unique challenges that come to being partners and parents, especially of young children, he said that sometimes the only thing to do is put your head down and keep going, keep plowing through, until you get to the other side.  And on those days when it all feels like too much, that's what I do. It's worked, so far. 

Seven years.  Gratitude for every moment that brought us to this one, for the family we've built and the love we have for each other.  We are so lucky.  Tomorrow may be another story.  So thank you for today, and todays past. For super seven.  

Here’s looking at you, eight.