One of the toughest parts of a good book is reaching the last page. There’s a certain sadness at the end, that final page where the story is concluded, the point at which the reader can only imagine what happens next.

I wrote of the death last winter of my father-in-law on New Year’s Day, a death unexpected, for which we weren’t ready. This past weekend, in the village where he’d lived for almost fifty years, we celebrated his life.1

More than one hundred friends and neighbors gathered under a massive tent in the open backyard on a beautiful sunny day. Lots of shorts, sandals and casual wear – no nylons, no heels, not a single suit or tie in the crowd. It is, after all, a community built and settled by people used to outdoor living, people who have challenged the mainstream world in one way or another – seeking a living through mining or logging, a life on the land, or freedom from conscription into an unjustifiable war.

Much of the crowd skewed toward their 70’s and 80’s, but there were younger faces, too. My father-in-law had been a carpenter, a musician, a teacher, and a traveler, and the celebration included snippets of his life through the people he’d shared it with.

A plan

There was a loose plan for the celebration, and I’d offered to help with anything that was needed. Just prior to the start, my mother-in-law asked me to read her remembrances.

I just can’t read it, she said, and I nodded. One of the toughest women I know, my mother-in-law has no patience for whining or weakness, says what she thinks and does mostly what she wants to, rules be damned. But in this, the loss of her husband, her life partner, confidante and friend, she was utterly unable to bully her way through it.

Read this section first. Then, after everything else has concluded, finish it off with the last page.

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I glanced at the typed four-page document and read through it once. I swallowed. It was long. And the final page would be tough.

My brother-in-law quieted the crowd, and I stepped up to the microphone. I’m not a public speaker, but I love to tell stories, and this one was epic. My father-in-law was housesitting for her mom when my mother-in-law returned from a trip to Israel at age 17 in 1969. She knocked on the door, he opened it, and it was love at first sight.

Inseparable from that point on, they moved to Canada. Got married. Had a child. Had another child. Moved to an abandoned mining town (population: 6) and then, while the roof of their cabin was being repaired, had their third child (my husband) in a shed. When the youngest became school-aged, they left the abandoned mining town and moved down to the small village on a lake where they raised their family.

Then the kids left the house, and they began traveling. Indonesia, Bali, Borneo, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Columbia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal and so many other countries. Remote islands, ancient ruins, and places where the crowds never visited. They met lifelong friends and made lifelong memories.

I concluded my reading of their life together with the births of their grandchildren and the happiness of a full life of love and family and left the final page for the end of the celebration.

The band and a choir

The celebration moved on as my father-in-law’s band, an aging crew of talented voices and musicians, sang Proud Mary and shared a few stories. Other people took the mic to talk about his impact on their lives, and I read aloud a few more remembrances from people who couldn’t attend due to age, illness or distance. The community choir that my mother-in-law had formed and led for nearly 40 years sang a song they’d prepared without her. It felt like a celebration, a fitting way to say good-bye to a man who wouldn’t want us to mourn.

Two songs

Then my brother-in-law invited an old family friend to the stage. I met this man thirty-five years ago (my husband and I have known each other for almost our entire lives, which is another story but not one for this post), and he had been a very fit man, a PE teacher who had retired but volunteered as a soccer referee when I eventually lived and coached in the village.

The crowd quieted when he stepped up to speak. Familiar to all, he’d been ravaged by Parkinson’s disease and hadn’t been seen as much in recent years. His face looked waxy and frozen, and his hands and body shook as his wife and my brother-in-law held a book up in front of him. He wanted to sing two songs, but I couldn’t hear why he’d chosen them.

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His voice was shaky and thin, and our mic wasn’t the greatest. I wondered how the crowd could possibly hear. When he began the first lines in a halting, reedy acapella, I could hardly discern the words. We all strained to listen.

Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armor coming,

Saying something about a queen.

There were peasants singing, and drummers drumming,

And the archer split the tree.

There was a fanfare blowing to the sun,

That was floating on the breeze.[1]

His voice was quiet and quaky. I recognized the tune but couldn’t place the song. I wished that our mic were better. That we could magnify his voice somehow.

And then, as he reached the chorus, something happened. One hundred voices rose to join his.

“Look at Mother Nature on the run, in the nineteen seventies.”

The singing flooded the backyard as the tears flooded my eyes, the tremendous impact of this community heard and felt throughout. This gathering of friends and neighbors, family and community not only celebrated my father-in-law’s life but shared and amplified his friend’s tribute.

“Look at Mother Nature on the run, in the nineteen seventies.” 

The second song happened in the same way. Those who had built a life in this tiny community with my father-in-law for the past 50 years lifted their voices and sang.

“Under the boardwalk, down by the sea, yeah. On a blanket with my baby, is where I’ll be.”[2]

Some took the low notes and others took the high ones, and the mood lifted and swelled. 

A joke

After the song had finished, a former student took the mic to describe my father-in-law’s introduction to his woodshop students on the first day of class:

A birch tree sat on a hill next to a beech tree. They spied a sapling down near the creek, and each believed that it was their descendant. They argued and finally asked a crow to go down to the creek and tell them what he found. The crow left and came back quickly. “Well,” said the crow, “it is neither a son of a birch nor a son of a beech. But it sure is a fine piece of ash.”

The Goodbye

And then, suddenly, it was time to close. Time for the last page. I stood in front of the mic and read the heading.

Saying Goodbye.

Just saying the words, my throat thickened, and tears slipped silently down my cheeks. My mother-in-law had written this passage to her husband, and now I read it, telling him, in front of friends and family, how deeply she had loved him, how hard his illness had been for her, how completely devastated she’d been to lose him.

And now my beautiful friend, we come to the hardest part in our amazing life together.

She told him how his touch was healing to her. How he was the love of her life. How she’d never forget their last day together, laying side-by-side holding hands on the single bed in the care home, love flowing between them. He wanted to choose when to leave his life, and he did. He slipped away that night, nothing unsaid, no words unspoken, just a legacy of love where a man once lay.

I closed the celebration with her final words, words that I could barely read through the blur of tears.

Until we meet again, que le vaya bien, may you travel well. I love you more than you will ever know. Sleep well.

The yard was silent. I left the mic and went straight to embrace my mother-in-law, grief naked on her face. Fifty-three years, and the love of her life was gone. The final page had been read.

[1] Neil Young, After the Goldrush, 1970.

[2] The Drifters, Under the Boardwalk, 1964.

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