Magic in the Air

Back in September when my siblings and I accompanied our Mom to the national cemetery in Bourne to be buried next to our Dad, three of us spoke to the gathered—me, my sister, and my oldest brother Don. (He's on the left in this picture.)

Don shared a very short prayer with us and then talked about his siblings (that's the other six of us in the picture). He talked about how much he loves us all, how he never feels as though we spend enough time together but that every time we are in the same space at the same time, we enjoy each other's company so thoroughly.

Believe me, the laughter you see in this photo is the norm when we get together, not the exception. We all inherited my Dad's sense of humor and our Mom's love of a good laugh.

Several remarkable incidents occurred during our weekend celebration of Mom. One was the power of the slide show my sister put together with photos of our Mom from about age two to a month before she died. Mom was a model when she was in her twenties, and she was quite beautiful. There were pictures of her with our Dad, of us kids at different times of our lives, of her grandkids. I watched it several times and never made it past picture three without tearing up.

The other power in the room was the instant bond among the first cousins born of the three children in my Mom's family. This side is quite scattered geographically from Alaska to New York to Virginia and Massachusetts to me up here in Vermont. So getting together is quite rare.

But my cousins Martin, Jane and Kate plus Martin's wife Nancy came to dinner at my sister's house on Saturday night. And it was as if we'd all been hanging around with one another yesterday. Then on Sunday, the remaining two cousins on that side, Linda and Bob, and their spouses arrived. And again, there were no boundaries among us.

It's true we have a shared history but that doesn't explain the pure joy we all experienced just being in the same room with one another, just like my siblings and I when we gather. There's something more at work than shared history here.

You could feel Mom and our uncles and aunts enjoying the scene. You could feel their happiness mixing with ours, their joy part and parcel with ours.

I once read that the definition of magic is a change in consciousness. I believe that. That's how I know there was magic in the air this weekend.