Deb Copaken is a wonderful friend—and an ideal Substacker. She’s got a singular voice, a devoted following, and a commitment to turn her own life experiences into thoughtful, meaningful reflections that help us all understand our lives better.
Deb and I have been having a wonderful, ongoing conversation in recent years about life transitions. She was gracious enough to share her life story for my book, Life Is in the Transitions, and, like so many people I’ve heard from, I loved her book, Ladyparts.
I was thrilled she invited me to a Substack Live about the rituals that hold our families together. Below is her post in which she shared our conversation.
Last weekend, I attended a wedding. The setting, overlooking Mt. Desert Narrows in Bar Harbor, Maine, was perfect. The weather was perfect. The bride looked stunning. The groom, divine. But my partner, who’d been asked to officiate—the groom is his godson—was faced with a painful conundrum: how to celebrate the joy of this special occasion while also acknowledging the concomitant grief of a gathering just one week after the death of the bride’s father?
In Judeo-Christian tradition, mapped out centuries ago in the Talmud, if a funeral procession meets a wedding procession at an intersection, the funeral procession must yield to the bride and groom. In other words, life should always takes precedence over death. The marriage must go on.
Yes. Of course. But still. There’s the theoretical meeting at the crossroads, and then there’s the actual experience of it.
My partner decided the best course of action was to acknowledge the raw pain of this too-recent loss at the outset of the ceremony, right after the bride’s brother walked her down the aisle. Then to move on to the marital vows from there. A front row, aisle seat, where the father of the bride would have sat, was left purposefully empty, with only a painted stone bearing his name and the tartan pocket square he’d picked out for the occasion. Later in the evening, the bride’s other brother read the toast their father had been preparing in the hospital, in the hope he would live long enough to give it. Suffice it to say, many tears were shed that night. But also the celebration—the gathering of friends and family to eat and to dance and to honor the young couple’s love, partnership, and their new beginning—served an important purpose, a necessary balm.
As long as humans have been gathering on earth, certain rules and expectations have evolved about these gatherings. Bruce Feiler, whom I met decades ago in a Bible study class—yes, a monthly gathering, with its own set of rules and traditions—became fascinated with those rules and traditions when his twin daughters left for college, leaving him wandering around his empty nest in a daze. So he went on a quest to figure out what it was about gatherings together that could teach us all something important about the traditions we keep—because we have always kept them or because our religion dictated them—and the traditions we, in this increasingly fractured, phone-addicted, and isolated era, forge on our own.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Bruce about his book, A Time to Gather, a few weeks ago. You can hear our conversation above.
Meanwhile, I plan to share Feiler’s book with my sisters and mother next week, at our annual summer gathering on the Delaware shore. My father started this yearly tradition thirty-five years ago, back in 1991, when he built a house he knew would eventually pay for itself by renting it out every June and July, while also providing a means to gather, for a week or two every August, his four daughters, their future spouses, and whatever grandchildren would (and did) arrive. Dad only got to experience seventeen of those Augusts—he died at age 67 in 2008, of the same cancer that felled the aforementioned bride’s father—but every time we gather at the house, he is still with us.
And that, in a nutshell, is the whole point of gathering: to celebrate life while we still have it and to honor those who are no longer here.
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The Council of Dads Turns 18 Today: 3 Things I’ve Learned
My CBS Mornings Interview about A TIME TO GATHER!
Pope Leo Calls for Human Gatherings to Counter AI
How Rituals Can Save Your Family — and the First Review of A TIME TO GATHER!
The Stories That Bind Us: My Most Popular Piece Ever
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