From dust we came, to dust we shall return.

We took the ferry across Puget Sound yesterday
from Seattle to Bainbridge Island, to my sister's
house in Poulsbo, for a family party in honor
of my 82-year-old uncle and aunt visiting from Boston.
I wonder what it felt like to him, my father's only
brother, to see this large gathering of relatives
who exist because of his brother, who died 43 years
ago. I don't really know my uncle, having grown up
3,000 miles from him. Nonetheless, he's been, for
the most part, the only connection I've had to my
paternal roots. And it's strange to think that there's
a good likelihood I'll never see him again.

Pondering the river that is life, its depths and shallows,
currents and eddies. The waters of Puget Sound were
an intense steel blue, choppy in October wind -- one of those
Pacific Northwest days where the smog has been swept eastward,
and everything seems to glow from within.
A landscape of gemstones: sapphires, rubies, emeralds.

---

And later today, with a different family group, we'll gather
to scatter ashes in Thornton Creek, and then rose petals.
And these words, from Raymond Carver:

Late Fragment And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did.

And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.