Weddings & Funerals

In late August, a few weeks before Sam and I flew to Wyoming for a dear friend’s wedding, I got a call from that dear friend. I hadn’t talked to him in a while; ours is a friendship that has lasted seventeen years on sporadic phone calls and cryptic notes. It is a long history of laughter and meaningful conversations, mostly disguised in teasing and practical jokes. Like the one I thought he was playing when he asked me, that night on the phone, “Do you want to marry us? It’s okay if you don’t, but if you don’t, you can’t come to the wedding.” He burst out laughing then, the obvious thing to do after saying something so absurd. But then there was a weird silence. “Well?” he asked.

We went back and forth for a while: Wade insisting he was serious, between peals of laughter, and me mostly saying things like: Shut the hell up!...You’re not funny...No really, how are you? 

As the “discussion” went on, I was silently scrolling back through seventeen years of memories, many of them from the time when we lived in neighboring condos at a ski resort. Like the morning I went to go to work and found a giant snowman built in the bed of my truck. Or the many nights he would throw snowballs at my windows, as if I didn’t know it was him. Or all the stupid things he’d ask me to do because he knew I would want to prove that I could--like paddling his metal canoe down the snowmelt-swollen river around midnight with at least a six pack of beer, or the time I drove my truck straight up a grassy hill while he fell over laughing. 

There were other times when I saved him and his roommates from themselves, like the night Wade and Corey and Todd all sat around feeling grumpy with headaches after they built a wall of snow bricks, sealing in their porch from the outside world, and sealing in, as well, the exhaust pipe from their propane heater. When we left that “lord of the flies”-like existence, it surprised me and pleased me that our friendships persisted. Wade and Corey would go off and have big adventures, and then randomly one or the other would call, or show up. When they showed up together, it was trouble. Like the time I went to go to work and found the 20 ft. Christmas wreath that had been on the front window of the bank, now on the front of my house. 

Once I started thinking back, the memories just kept coming. Like the time Wade showed up and handed me a dead grouse that he had just run over in my driveway and suggested we have dinner together. Or the time when he was driving from Vermont to Colorado for the winter and he asked me if I wanted to keep him company on the ride. I agreed on the condition that we drive through the Badlands on the way--well, not exactly on the way--a decision I momentarily regretted when we got pulled over in South Dakota and told to stand on the side of the road while the cop and his dog searched Wade’s van. Wade barely moved his lips as he whispered to me, “If he asks you any questions, don’t say a word.” On that same trip, we argued over whether or not we should go an additional forty-five minutes out of the way to see Mount Rushmore. Wade insisted it would be dark. I insisted it was the kind of thing that would be lit up. It was January, and late at night, and we drove to the top of an empty parking garage and sat in his van and looked at the stone faces all lit up. A security guard came to see what we were doing. He was nice and we talked for a few minutes, but then he said goodbye, he had to go “turn off the lights.” As we drove away ourselves, we wondered out loud, “did he mean those lights?” And in the rearview mirror, we watched Mount Rushmore disappear one stone face at a time.

By the end of the phone call in August, I was 95% sure that Wade wasn’t kidding and he really was wondering if I would officiate his wedding. I had been looking forward to relaxing on this trip, to having absolutely no responsibilities. We were leaving Quinn with my dad and Louise for five days. I was so desperate for the break, I was even looking forward to the air travel--something normally stressful seemed heavenly when I imagined I wouldn’t have to keep track of Quinn, and I could read a book, uninterrupted, all day long. At the wedding I imagined being invisible--watching the festivities from a comfortable chair in the back, Sam on one side, Corey on the other, nothing to do but smile and soak it all in. But with this, I was in the hot seat again--a job to do, out of my comfort zone, wondering at what point I would be exposed, again, for having fallen for the latest of Wade’s practical jokes.

I went through a predictable pattern: disbelief, frustration, anxiety and then, eventually, a determined resolve. I got my “credentials” online, I pulled out and studied the wedding ceremony our neighbor Stephanie wrote for us, I emailed the bride and groom a bunch of questions, I enlisted Corey’s help and moral support. Two days before the wedding we were en route to Jackson, after saying goodbye to Quinn and my dad who, at the time, was waiting for news of his brother, my Uncle Dean, who was in the hospital and hadn’t woken up in two days. It was a hard time to leave him. My dad and my uncle were close; he loved him of course, but admired and respected him too. I had seen it my whole life, but especially last summer when they visited together in Vermont. I hoped Quinn would provide some humor for him in those difficult days, and not prove to be an added burden. I felt guilty for leaving, but he insisted we go.

We took a bus from NH to Boston to catch our flight. My head was in two places--trying to think of what I would say in Wade’s ceremony, and thinking of my Uncle Dean and my Aunt Marion and cousins. Because they were coexisting in my thoughts, I wondered what advice my aunt and uncle would suggest I pass on to my friend. Their marriage was a long one, almost sixty years long and, by virtue of time alone, it was a great success. In all of my memories of them, they are laughing and making jokes...even when life was hard. Wade and my uncle would have gotten along well. We had a three hour layover at JFK and before our next flight, the ceremony was written.

When we eventually made it to Jackson on Friday afternoon, the ranch was bustling with people getting things ready. Siblings and friends all had jobs and ours was to rehearse the ceremony. We drove down the road and walked out to where the ceremony would be, next to the Snake River, in the cottonwoods, with the Tetons as background. Corey, Sam, Natasha and Wade and I went out there and pieced things together. A while later, Corey and I drove a van to the airport to drop it off for another of Wade’s friends arriving later that night. On the way, I tried to practice what I’d written, but I couldn’t get through the line where I imagined telling Natasha, “you’ve chosen a man who will be a loyal friend.” Or the part where I would try to say something about how marriage is sometimes work, but that “it is good and meaningful work. Work you will feel lucky to have.” Gratitude is one of the few things that renders me speechless, and just about everything makes me cry.

Saturday was a perfect day. The sun was shining as Corey and I set up the chairs by the river for our friend’s wedding. We had the place to ourselves for a while, and being there with him helped me get over my nerves. And we had Natasha and Wade to ourselves for a while in the morning too, and being with them as they rushed around, doing their final tasks, laughing and loving each other as they do, I felt fully the honor that it was to be asked to be part of their important day.

A few hours later I helped my trickster friend marry his beloved, and I felt renewed in my own marriage having given such careful thought to what it all means.

Later in the day I was talking with Wade’s sister Melanie, someone I had long heard stories about but had never actually met. We were standing on the periphery of the activity, looking out over the family and friends who had gathered from so many places. I felt a connection to her right away, and was eager to know her firsthand. “I’m so glad to be getting older,” she told me, as we talked about the many phases of life. It was an observation that made me think. Usually the advance of time causes me some anxiety. Everyone gets older at the same time; the babies are suddenly no longer babies, and the elders advance precipitously. But something in her comment rung true for me as well. Life is, undeniably, too short, but the older I get, the more I am able to appreciate the moments that make it up. The person I was twenty years ago, even ten years ago, would have seen it all so differently, with a much lesser sense of just how much it all means.

After the wedding, Sam and I drove from the high Wyoming plains south toward Salt Lake City to fly home. As we wound down through Logan Canyon, through sagebrush country and high rock cliffs, my thoughts were once again back east with my family. My Uncle Dean’s life support was stopped that day and it was hard not to think of him slipping away as the miles slipped by on our drive.

When I had a private moment with my cousin Paul a few days later at his father’s wake, I was surprised by his perspective. “It was such a privilege to be there with him,” he told me, “such a privilege to be present for that, you know?” When I sat next to my mother as she was dying, I didn’t think it was a privilege; I was angry and scared. But I was younger then and now I am better equipped to understand what Paul was saying; I used to see everything through my own lens, but more and more I see what’s going on around me as what is going on for others. I too am glad to be getting older.

The day before my Uncle Dean didn’t wake up, he had visitors with him all day. My aunt was there, of course, and some other family and friends. They played games in the hospital room. They laughed. It was the first day he’d been so upbeat in weeks. He smiled a lot, felt happy, insisted on doing things for himself. When he said good night that night, the future was brighter for all of them. A nurse saw him late in the evening and again in the early hours before sunrise. She noted that he was still glowing from his joyful day. A few hours later, when she went to check on him again, he was still sleeping, and after that he never woke up.

My cousin Paul told that and other stories from the alter at my uncle’s funeral. He tried hard to do it without crying, but he didn’t make it. It is the curse and the blessing of the family genes; the Litchfields feel things deeply. While it’s messy sometimes, I see it as a wonderful gift. And how funny to have this gene coupled with the family's sense of humor. As Paul tried to compose himself, his wife, and his uncles (my dad among them), made wise cracks from their pews to lighten his load. Just when I thought I would die of sadness watching my aunt cry, my Uncle Du leaned up and offered her a tissue, and he promised her "it's not even a dirty one!" As we mourned together, we laughed together too. It’s the only funeral I’ve ever been to that felt a bit like a comedy show--with my uncle’s grandchildren walking the wrong way down the aisle, my cousin Brian and my Aunt Marion returning to the wrong pew after receiving communion, my cousin Colette not knowing the words to the prayer she was supposed to read (and was supposed to have had provided for her!), and Paul’s wife Mary making political wise cracks about her father-in-law just loud enough to be heard and appreciated by the family in the first few rows. I have no doubt my Uncle Dean would’ve had a good time.

When I was younger I was so obsessed with proving my own independence that I was reluctant, if not unwilling, to follow any pre-determined paths. I didn't see the value in these rituals and I thought I would always be happy doing things my own way, in my own time. From where I stand now, I’m really grateful for the fact that I’m not doing things on my own, and grateful too for all the rituals I’ve been allowed to participate in. It really is a privilege to be present in other people's lives, and to bear witness, to every wedding, every funeral, every life well and kindly lived.

Wade & Natasha, congratulations!

And Uncle Dean...

We miss you. xo