The feeling of belonging

I don't even know how to write about Aunt Grace's memorial service, except to say her send-off was far more joyful than sad, a true celebration of a woman whose driving force was always love, and that is what we brought to her memorial, love and more love. Lots of cousins came, the younger ones, the cousins in their twenties and early thirties, bonded in ways that made the older ones, the aunts and uncles in their fifties and sixties, smile deeply with satisfaction. After the day-long repast, which lasted into the evening with dinner at a Mandarin buffet, my own three (my son and daughter and niece, in the photo above) went out for drinks with their cousins from Vancouver. They all stayed up into the wee hours, and my daughter said after that it was easy and good, with many belly laughs, and a sense of being alike, of being related, a sense of belonging to one another. It's that sense of belonging that my family excels at, the feeling that we are a tribe, enfolded, and that word again, loved. I'm rambling. Here are pictures from the gathering last Saturday in Toronto, at which we bade the last of the nine, our incomparable Grace, aka Gaga, a grateful tear-and-laughter-filled goodbye.