Nine days, 23 hours - but who's counting?

Today's post was written by Dave's good friend Whitney:

Hello friends and family of Pat,

I spent a warm evening with Pat and Dave on Friday night, and Dave asked me to write a word or two about it. Pat is looking extremely well and is having a great week since leaving the hospital. I think she must be tired of hearing people say, “You look GREAT!” when what they’re really thinking is, “You sure don’t look like a person with cancer.” And she doesn’t. It’s confusing. And a relief. Lets dare to believe things might just work out fine.

Dave and Whitney in Mexico, 1996.

Ten years ago, Dave and I had several long, meandering conversations with Pat’s Mom, Elgin, when we were passing through Orange County on our way to Mexico (and Central America, though we didn’t know at the time that we were headed that far). I come back to these conversations often, because she taught me so much about how life is long and how much love and life comes after even the most unbearable losses.

Friday’s conversation with Pat started there with stories of her Mom, and then we ranged over the history of the Johnsons and the Woods. She got out the wonderful book of Crook family history (what a deeply generous gift to future generations!) and Pat shared recollections of uncles, aunts, grand uncles, grand aunts and cousins. We pieced together Pat’s own early chronology, which isn’t as easy as you might think because she and her immediate family moved pretty much every year until they landed in Southern California, bought some land and built a house (garage first, with the whole family of 6 living in one room, until there was a mudroom, then a bedroom to share with her sister and eventually a kitchen).

I have an abiding interest in what it means to have a sense of place, and Pat and Elgin’s lives have strong place-based themes, beginning of course with Star Valley and ranging over the years to family centers in California and Utah. Friday happened to be one of those sharp blue early summer days, contrasting sprawling and green Walnut Creek against the sparse browning hills of Mt Diablo, so typically California. This is where Dave, Pat and Mike and his family have made their place for a long time now. We talked about what California means to both Dave and Pat, and what it means to be “from” somewhere.

We got to talking about how much the various family reunions have meant to her over the years. She related how brother Bob sent out the invitation to bring the Wood clan together one year and pretty much left the details to Pat and Char, lots of work but so very rewarding and memorable. She described the color-coded t-shirts that helped everyone remember who belonged to what part of the extended family. I asked her if she felt deeply connected to people she perhaps didn’t know or hadn’t seen in a while, and she responded urgently, eyes widening, “Oh yes! Absolutely!”

It is so helpful to be reminded that we are part of a long chain reaching backwards and ahead. We three talked quite openly and easily about death on Friday night, but it was in a sense-making way, not heavy or tearful, gently sharing how losing a grandmother or a parent ties us more meaningfully into that web through shared experience.

The extended Adair/Wood/Johnson/Crook family history continues to instruct me, and I am so grateful to be connected in a small way your big loving web of life, even if we have never met.

Love,

Whitney

Whitney and Dave (on the far right) last weekend
with friends at Tassajara Zen Center.