Planning a memorial service while grieving is an absolute trip. Honor the grief in order to be led by love for the person but still maintaining decision making brain. Cry a little, decide what food to order and order it. Write morning pages, choose the venue and book it. Go for a long walk, consider who wants to be there and invite them. Do they already know he died? Slow down to inform them of this is new news. Decide how to set up the table and chairs and tell the venue. Choose a mask policy and communicate it. I really toiled over this eulogy, it started with my own process of being able to log about the day he died and process the experience that went into that. Then I reshaped it to make it more for the service; less medical details, more of the beauty of his peaceful death, I wanted to offer this to people who also felt this loss. Despite a rough week in the hospital preceding it, this really was a good death. What a gift. I wanted to offer this to folks who showed up and to you, dear reader.
I was really occupied with the space that would be created for guests. I can’t help it - “creating containers of care” is one of my little catch phrases for my work and branding. I create containers of care; spaces for healing & bodywork, vessels & pottery for ritual, bottles of herbal medicine for feeling better; facilitating a memorial service, was this not also a container of care?? Friends reminded me I didn’t need to worry myself too much about the experience for other people. I was after all at the center of the loss. If I fell apart while reading the eulogy, this gathering was exactly for that, for me to have witnesses, for us all to have witnesses, in a time of loss. Grief is not meant to be experienced entirely in isolation; it leans towards loneliness on its own, we must stay engaged to let ourselves hold and be held. This sentiment to not worry too much about the experience for guests helped ease the pressure of every little thing going just right, but also still felt in opposition to the fact that I was at the helm of orchestrating it all. Many people helped make everything happen (if you’re reading, thank you!) and I still delegated what to help, had to come up with a concrete task to give to anyone who offered ‘let me know what I can do.’ And whether its anxiety or just loving considering every little piece of an experience, I think this will always be a part of who I am. And by the end, I felt really validated for being so nervous, because all the little things I considered swirling in my head, contributed something and it turned out wonderful. Our family was fairly agnostic, perhaps atheist, so while I’m certainly grateful to not have had religious trauma as a part of my upbringing like many of my queer friends, planning a memorial service without a religious template to deviate from or a having a spiritual guide to format things, I tapped into my own sense of magic and creativity to build out the time. Dad has some Buddhist leanings, a similarity he was surprised to share with the chaplain, so I think he would have appreciated the supportive space with threads realism and mysticism.
The entry way had a couple of grief alters, photos, letters of memories people had written, I asked people to make spare copies of their favorite photos of him and people could take home their favorites, a friend hand made a guestbook decorated with ferns and green hues that matched the program (the matching was just a magical coincidence!) for people to write their name and share reflections. Masks were provided and Peruvian pan flute music played as people entered and offered condolences to me, lingered at the entry way display, laughed at old photos, chatted with other guests and found a place to sit. I could write a play by play of the service, but I really just wanted to share the eulogy with you, so I’ll wrap up this long winded intro. I was grateful to everyone who shared: my siblings (we have different dads, so our grief is alongside one another but different), my aunt, and other family friends of dad’s, and then a few more people spoke during open shares. There were tears and laughter, and eventually I was less nervous and could MC a bit and facilitate other speakers. We wrapped up with Mary Oliver and I welcomed everyone to stick around and drink wine and eat food. We opened the doors and the rainy day turned sunny (just like the day dad died!) and people trickled outside to eat or stayed in. The food and drink was delicious so people really stuck around and shared stories, and that was what I wanted. If people are hungry and the food is meh, we won’t be nourished enough to sit with our grief among others! I wanted the food to invite people to stick around and it did. I felt held by people’s attendance and pleasantly surprised by some friendly faces I hadn’t seen in years. Anyway, I hope I haven’t lost your attention, but it was a beautiful day. There was grief and magic and tears and laughter and the realness of all those coexisting felt bigger than family dysfunction and social awkwardness that can arise at these sorts of gatherings. I’m so grateful for everyone who was there and the help I had and the privilege I’ve been afforded to take the time to grieve and plan such a day with authenticity to myself and my dad.
I hope you liked your service, dad and enjoyed getting to see all the people who showed up for you. We love you.
Grief is not meant to be experienced entirely in isolation; it leans towards loneliness on its own, we must stay engaged to let ourselves hold and be held.
“IF I MUST DIE”
BY REFAAT ALAREER
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.
Thank you all so much for coming. I spent a lot of time one-on-one with my dad, we were comfortable that way, so it’s been sweet to hear who he was to other people. We’re all here to remember and honor our time with Steve. I’ll always remember him as Steve, and dad, obviously, but a while ago he got to preferring Stephen, so you’ll hear us go back and forth between the two.
Often he would pick up the phone when I called him (yes on cell phones, with caller id) saying “hello this is Stephen.” “Hi dad, it's me, Meghan, ya know your daughter!”
I suppose I’m not the only one that watched him somewhat clunkily bounce between formal and casual.
A friend of mine from middle and high school remembered the first time she had oysters was a time my dad was barbecuing oysters in our backyard. His affinity for the less delicious varieties of health food fads didn’t lend himself to being known for appreciating delicacies like oysters, so I love that that's someone’s memory of him. Dad and I traveled quite a bit together– we got close on some of these trips, and I’m grateful for that time we had. I could move past the anger I felt after mom and dad divorced, how different they were and how hard that sometimes was, but of course what they shared was their love for me. Going on these trips together rebuilt my relationship with my dad. I would pitch him trip ideas to see if he would pay for it and he took me up on more than a few.
The first one I suggested was to go to Cuba the summer I graduated SFSU in 2009. It was with an intergenerational group of organizers who did annual trips to Cuba that included political education and advocacy to end the blockade and bring medical supplies and educational materials to the island. It was affordable and seemed well organized and I said to dad there’d be old people and young people and wouldn’t it be cool to go to Cuba? It was an amazing and formative experience for me. I remember one person who I thought was really cool, a guy my age from Colombia who grew up in San Francisco, really liked and seemed to respect my dad. He and my dad and I would hang out and he was so curious about the things my dad knew, I’m sure many of you remember Stephen being a walking encyclopedia. Whether he and my dad had the same views or experiences wasn’t important, but to just listen to my dad share all his academic knowledge... I still wish I got better at slowing down to tune in like that with dad, but I learned then that it could be cool to listen a little more thoughtfully you know, instead of brushing it off and rolling my eyes like kids so often do with their parents.
And my dad could be very sweet. There was one Christmas he visited me in New Orleans. I hosted a Christmas Eve party enlisting folks to bring ingredients for various champagne cocktails and as the evening got later and we all got drunker, he was like ya know, I’m going to make you girls a snack, and proceeded to start baking some chicken tenders. Turning on the oven and everything! I was like '“dad, what are you doing making chicken at midnight” and he was like “well, it just seems like a bite to eat would be good.” I still remember his face when he rightly asserted it was time for a midnight snack– it made all the sense in the world to him. He ignored my doubt and turned back to the chicken with a rare decisiveness. It gives me a warm feeling and makes me chuckle to think about it now. It was one of the few times some of my friends in New Orleans spent time with dad, so it makes me happy that this is their memory of him.
As a kid, I remember stopping during road trips to look at rocks and examining fossils or skeletons found on the side of the road. It took me a while to appreciate, but having a geologist for a dad is actually pretty cool. He knew so much! We went to France together on my suggestion. The photo of him many of you have remarked loving was taken on that trip, in Brittany. We were doing one of his favorite things, looking at rocks, visiting old rock formations. The photo of him here on this poster is us taking a little kayak ride in City Park in New Orleans– he was good at feeling the vibe of that city, he’d go out and wander around and it surprised me what he was willing to take in. He went with me to North Carolina to check out the massage school I eventually attended, we took Amtrak, went to museums, went on leisure mountain hikes.
The last trip I wish I could have provided for him– I was too often a stick in the mud about. The last few years he’d been going on about living on a sailboat, which seemed far-fetched for many reasons, like his ongoing need for nearby medical care, not to mention his less-than-proficient sailing abilities. I wish I had joined him in his sailboat dreams a little sooner, but he got so sick so fast. I was planning to book a little sail excursion in the bay when he was recovered from the radiation and before chemo made him too exhausted but that window of time didn’t present itself. We did once stop in Sausalito driving home from the doctors just to wonder the docks and check out the different sailboats.
Before dad was transferred from Healdsburg Hospital to UCSF, I grabbed a few things from his house on a whim before heading south on the 101 to be with him and one thing I grabbed was this Lonely Planet book I got him a few years back called Amazing Boat Journeys. Not sailboat adventures as much, but different ferry rides and boat excursions around the world with little descriptions of the place and what the boat journey is like. I read some of those to him daily at the hospital. I finally got onboard with your sailboat dreams, dad!
So, let’s all take a deep breath. (pause, and do so)
We’re here to honor and grieve Stephen, which in turn may invite us to consider our own mortality, which is hard. There are reasons we tend to avoid it, even dad avoided the discussion. But I do want to share with you more about the day he died because after a very difficult week in the hospital, it evolved into a beautiful day and a very peaceful death.
I won’t go in to a lot of medical details here, but there’s some mentions of that as well as the setting of the ICU so if that doesn’t feel like something you have space for today, please feel free to take care of yourself.
Sometime in February, I saw something on the internet that read: “I hope death is like being carried to your bedroom when you are a child and fall asleep on the couch during a family party. I hope you can hear the laughter from the next room.” I was obviously thinking about death, thinking about dad dying, watching his life force slowly slip away, and yet I still didn’t think he’d be gone before another month was out.
I didn’t imagine I could curate it for him, this falling-asleep-at-a-party death, but there were little things here and there I invited in, imagining him feeling supported knowing that people were near him, having a nice time. The day before we went to the hospital, Vicky and Aunt Linda were at the house, I had come in from Berkeley, and at one point we were all talking in the living room and dad was in bed. I suppose overall in his house, there were not many times he’d have been in bed overhearing guests. He was starting to get pretty disoriented and we weren’t sure why yet; it turned out to be high levels of calcium in his blood due to the cancer on his spine. Later at night, I was helping him back into bed, and he asked me, “who else is here?” I answered, “Just me and Aunt Linda.” He asked this several times, he seemed to think there were more people around.
He asked, “did we have a party?” I finally decided to join in. I said, “Ya dad, we had some people over. Did you have a nice time?”
“Oh ya, that was nice.” He mumbled, relieved to understand what he was recalling, and tucked himself back in.
A little over a week after that would be his last day. His fluids got regulated enough for him to be himself again and even receive some visitors that weekend, but then he aspirated on some water and coded, which was what brought him to the ICU, eventually it was explained to me this is where he would die. After many medical conversations and switching from trying to talk to him about hospice in the few lucid moments he’d had to holding his hand and calling on spirit to support him in his transition, I had to choose a day to remove life support.
It was a Wednesday. My sister came up to join me, we walked my dog that morning, I picked some flowers, and grabbed a few things to add to the altar that I’d build in his room that day. Tarot cards, the boat book I'd been reading him, mugwort and yarrow oil were already in my bag from previous visits. I grabbed a few more things thinking of dad, asked a bird loving friend to bring some birdie tchotchkes for me to borrow, Jen picked up a Chewbacca pez dispenser, I added some rocks and gems. I had shared online where things were with him and asked friends and followers to light a candle to help show him the way, so I know there were a lot of folks thinking about him that day.
There was so much traffic on our way from Berkeley to UCSF. It took a full 90 minutes to cross the bridge from Berkeley to reach UCSF. We left at about 10am. Once we got to Parnassus, both parking garages there were full. I sighed, breathing in confusion, exhaling acceptance. The obstacles were starting to become comical. I guess it was fine, I wasn’t trying to rush dad’s passing, ya know? “Okay, dad,” I said, “I hear you, you’re not ready yet.” We finally got inside. A nurse said they’d page the team that we’d arrived. The wait began.
The intensive care unit is well named, I think. The nurses cared for dad really intensely. At one point dad had one of these plastic warming blankets that had hot air blown into it. One nurse talked about the way he communicated with her about his needs while unconscious in a way I was struck by. She really tended to him. Even though his next chapter was death and into another realm, it can be done with dignity and care. These are the moments I think of Gaza, how many people are grieving entire family lines without hospital care, without time and safe spaces to grieve, to mourn, losing loved ones violently while grappling for their own survival. Rejecting the unfair reality that my dad and I have access to this medical care and time doesn’t provide it to others, so I sit with the collective grief as well and I keep reading to him.
Things take forever in the hospital. We waited hours for it all to start. While we waited it was like that statement about the party, and dad being put to bed in the middle of it. There was idle chatter between nurses, the chaplain, my sister and I. Tears here and there, my sister and I shared some memories; with our age gap, we have different memories of dad and coming across a few new stories alongside him was sweet. I kept pulling tarot cards, trying to tune in and see if dad was ready yet. The altar near his bedside had an oracle card deck displayed with an image of lungs. “Reciprocity”, it read. “The complete cycle is give and receive.”
The doctor finally came by and checked in with me and gave the ICU nurse team the okay to prepare to take dad off life support. They explained to me how they’d do it: a respiratory therapist would be there to decrease the amount of support the breathing machine was giving him, let him adjust, then decrease the blood pressure medication helping his heart pump, then decrease the breathing machine. They’d continue to alternate this; decreasing the blood pressure medicine and the breathing support. until the breathing tube was removed. In my memory, it was nearly an hour of alternating slowly removing one support or another, letting him acclimate to finding his own breath with decreasing support. It was somber but sweet, the lung tech and nurse professional, patient, and kind.
Dad took a breath on his own.
My sister and the chaplain and I remarked on the sun shining in but I had to be reminded how unusual the San Francisco sun is. The respiratory tech kindly excused himself and the nurse turned off the monitor after she discontinued the remaining blood pressure support.
I've told the story so many times, every time probably a little different. Sometimes I share more on how it feels, the loss of a parent– a piece of your origin story no longer in our realm. Sometimes I focus on the medical steps, which feel different to describe but are an important part of his story.
So at first we all stared at him, reverent and expectant. Even though people had told me it wouldn’t happen right away, there’s still a sense of, ok the machines are off, so see ya!
He’d take a breath and they were hungry deep breaths, but not stressful or frightened, with long intervals in between. After one or two, I looked up at the nurse and asked gingerly how long it tends to be for people. She said based on what we’d shared about him being a fighter, she thought it could take a few hours. But ultimately now it's really up to him. It could be five minutes or not until 5 am (it was about 5pm at this point). The reminder of linear time broke the tension in the room. We stopped staring at him, I looked at the chaplain and acknowledged it being the end of his work day. Moments of entering and exiting life would happen as the world moves on, the chaplain probably needed to clock out, join the traffic, have dinner, everything else that happens in the ins and outs of a regular day. The nurse and chaplain stepped out and my sister looked at me, leaned over dad, and said “so we actually have to get the car from the valet before 6:30 …” we laughed at her timidness holding this worry and we chatted logistics for a moment while we watched dad take these slow measured breaths. Which would be the last? Do I have time to pee? Move the car? Have a snack? Speaking of snacks, the nurse asked if we were hungry and said they’d have some crackers sent up to us and when they later arrived and it turned out to be not just some crackers but a whole grief basket with trail mix and water and chocolate and yes, also crackers wrapped in cellophane. Our first condolences gift.
The chaplain came back in to say goodbye and the nurse peered in. I was still holding dads hand and was telling him it would be okay, he didn’t have to be scared. I told him, best of all, he wouldn't need to go to any more doctor appointments! He didn’t need to go to the dentist, wherever he was going he would have perfect teeth. The chaplain and Jen laughed, the chaplain remarked about the mundane challenges of keeping up a body. What a relief it might be to be forgiven of this burden.
And the dentist UGH who likes going to the dentist? …
I looked back at dad and realized it had been the longest interval of time that he hadn’t taken a breath. I looked at the nurse and noticed she was watching and made the same observation; she went to get her stethoscope. The chaplain caught on to this moment and said he’d stay a bit longer. The nurse returned and listened to his chest and looked at me, nodded, and said “ya I think he’s passed.”
It was so quiet and the sun was shining in from the window on his head. The bundle of flowers I made for him laid on his belly. He stopped taking breaths and his color changed and then just the sun and the flowers were left, adding brightness to the room. It was 5:12. I really hope he was ready and with only roughly ten minutes after removing the life saving supports, I have to assume he was. What a relief, what a gift. I hope that the comforts provided and the friends who lit candles and the company of loved ones and strangers were all like a lullaby rocking him to a dream sleep where there’s no health complications or biopsies or specialists. Just some family and casual acquaintances, chatting and chuckling about life's beauty and struggles. I hope it did sound like a casual party in another room. A softness and kindness that we can all be comforted by, in order to let go. Like I said I can’t entirely take credit for curating this falling-asleep-at-a-party death, but the weekend of loved ones visiting him, despite him being exhausted and so over being in the hospital, it had to have been such a grounding reminder of who he was, who loved him, and that we’d all be okay.
(pause, take a deep breath)
Of course a much faster way to tell the story is that I told him he didn’t have to go to the dentist and he was just like oh thank god BYE my time here is done. But we’re all here anyway, so I figured we could hear the long version.
I’m gonna leave you with a joke dad loved to tell. I can’t tell you how many times I heard him tell it. It’s a classic dad joke, more awkward statement than punchline. The call and response is not intuitive at all but lets try?
Q: Why do elephants paint their toenails red?
???
A: So they can hide in cherry trees.
???
Q: Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?
A: (they will say NO). Works, doesn't it?!
*laugh track*
As poorly as the delivery of this joke usually went, it did always result in some shared laughter and mostly I think I’m tickled to imagine that a guy led more by pragmatism than mysticism, maybe somewhere believes there’s elephants secretly hanging out in cherry trees.
After everyone else has spoken, close out with the Mary Oliver poem –
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
--Mary Oliver
Thank you for such a moving story. It's a huge experience to go through dying and death with anyone you care for. You did a wonderful service to others by relating your experiences so well.
thank you for sharing that. its so special.