Funerals. Weddings. Sudden illness. Anniversaries of marriages and sometimes of deaths. We gather and it reminds us of the things we know are essential, but which we put carefully and lovingly aside, like the good china or the silver candlesticks, out of the way once the everyday hustle takes over again.
The time has shifted, the darkness has settled close. It is night-dark by the time I’ve finished boiling water for the afternoon tea. The leaves, which just last week made a gorgeous glow over Vancouver’s streets and parks are now gathering in gutters and empty wading pools where they will collect washed-away worms and grit until spring.
I’ve just spent a week in a retirement home. I looked around at the comfortable surroundings designed to accommodate late-in-life transitions – wide corridors, shared spaces andinstitutional sameness, yet each individual’s doorway subtly unique in ways that both broke and warmed my heart – and Alice-like, suddenly I was holding up a mirror in which I could see reflected my attendance at Blissdom's wrap party.
