News from Jules | 05.19.2025 | Crossing Over: Part 2
It truly felt blessed.
Everything went so smoothly, it truly felt blessed. Hopping on another plane less than a week after I returned from meeting one of my best friends’ new baby in Denver, I actually slept on the redeye flight before landing in Philadelphia. I picked up a sporty red Kia from Budget Rentals, drove through the city toward the countryside as the flaming sun lit up the sky, and arrived at my best friend’s Mom’s house just before 7 a.m.
The front door opened as I pulled up to the house, and my best friend shuffled out in a pink bathrobe to welcome me with a big, fuzzy hug. My freshman roommate at Boston University, life twin and soul sister. A best friend of 25 years. It had been three and a half years since we’d seen each other during an action-packed spring break reunion trip in Oregon, right after she graduated from nursing school in North Carolina and right before I left Portland.
Her Mom’s house was full of her siblings and spouses and their soundly sleeping children, so she quietly made me a cup of tea and fried some eggs while we chatted at the kitchen island—about my flight, about her frequent travels between home in Montana and here in Pennsylvania, about her nursing job. I noticed my name on the fridge and read the typed note that must have arrived with the bouquet I sent a few days before the spring equinox: “Sending lots of love and comfort from Oregon. Love, Jules.” A few days before her Mom passed away.
We had this precious little hour check-in when I arrived—before all the funeral festivities began—and then at the end of the weekend, we snuck away to a local brewery for another hour of catching up before I flew out early that Monday morning. She followed up on a conversation thread we’d texted about months ago but lost track of after her Mom entered hospice. I mentioned that my Dad had his prostate removal surgery on the same day I arrived, and it went well. I giggled when she apologized:
“Oh golly, I didn’t realize that was happening already. I’m so sorry I didn’t ask about this!” As if she’d had nothing else going on the whole weekend.
Of course, I was curious about everything that had happened in the past few months, especially those last few days with her Mom, but I knew this was a time for presence, not for questions. These stories would be shared someday when, and if, the time was right.
The weekend itself was wonderfully rich with storytelling. I experienced and learned so much more about this best friend, her hometown, her parents, her family, and their communities.
During family dinners at her Mom’s house; chatting with her siblings and their kids during their after-dinner walk ritual; helping set up and greet guests at the memorial reception; grabbing beers with her sister’s childhood best friends; getting a tour of her childhood neighborhood and the infamous creek with her sister’s bestie; partying and dancing at the BBQ hosted by her brother’s bestie’s family from across the creek; staying up late into the night laughing with her and her siblings in her Mom’s living room.
As well as unexpectedly having time to explore the area while the family was doing airport pick-ups and memorial logistics. With Google Maps as my guide, I visited a local artist’s home/studio from the early 1900s, a colonial farmstead, and Valley Forge National Historical Park. The land and animals and trees and flowers and sky, even the heat and humidity, felt as integral to the experience as the people who’ve lived and died there.
Even though it wasn’t the reason I came, I left knowing and loving my best friend even more completely.
See beautiful photos of the memorial weekend and exploring rural Pennsylvania on Instagram.
The day after the hot and humid memorial service, the world was ready to weep. Drop by drop, it started to rain as we loaded the wild and woodsy floral arrangements from the church altar into the back of her Mom’s car, but the large branches from the tree her Dad planted when they finished building her childhood home wouldn’t fit. So we carried them through the graveyard and laid them beside her Mom’s—and grandpartents—gravesite. His ashes already spread to the wind over 15 years ago.
It was naturally quiet with just the three of us in the graveyard.
As Margaret Renkl wonders in The Comfort of Crows: “How can an irreplaceable life end in the midst of so many beginnings?”
Just over a month into spring, there was new life everywhere.
The wind blew through the trees, and squirrels scampered along the branches, shaking fat rain from the bright new green leaves that plopped on the red umbrella I borrowed because I hadn’t packed a raincoat, per the 80°s forecast for rural Pennsylvania that weekend.
My best friend knelt by the grave with her hand in the fresh soil for long moments before rising and slowly walking over to us, shaking. Her boyfriend put his arm around her and leaned his head against hers. I walked over, lifted the umbrella above us, and nestled under her arm from the other side with a squeeze.
And we cried.
For it all.
For suddenly losing her Dad to cancer so many years ago, for living with her Mom’s rare and aggressive cancer for seven years, for the painful last few months of hospice, for finally resting in peace. But being gone.
I could feel how her world had shifted. Yes, there were still her siblings and nephews and nieces and aunts and uncles and cousins, but the generations that came before had now passed on.
This was exactly why I came. So I could be right by her side.
During this important time of crossing over.
A few days after I flew back to Oregon, I drove up to Portland to visit my Dad a week after his surgery—everything went so smoothly, it also felt blessed.
I sat by his side on the porch that morning. We sipped our tea and gazed at the honeysuckle climbing up the side of his house, excitedly interrupting our conversation—well, mostly me recounting my recent trips and life in Bend—whenever a hummingbird buzzed over to suck from the long pink flowers. For those long moments, it was naturally quiet with just the three of us on the porch. Hummingbirds always feel like the presence of my Mom’s spirit checking in.
“Sometimes when I miss you I find myself outside
standing in the meadow, surrounded by tall field grass,
red canyon walls and vaulted high blue sky,
and it’s not that my sorrow is any smaller, it’s just
that I’m reminded how small is my life and how vast
is the world. Somehow being outside makes it easier
to remember I’m part of a story so much larger
than my own. Even the tiniest new leaf
on the cottonwood tree, even the smallest wave on the river
sings to me of immensity, calls me into the great
communion, invites me to re-see the moment
as an altar where I can lay down even my greatest
wounds and feel how the world receives it all
and says, welcome, it’s all welcome, welcome.”
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “The Welcoming”
Sitting there on the porch, I felt a new sense of peace. On the surface, there was relief that my Dad was okay with a very optimistic prognosis for returning to his active lifestyle by the summer and for many years to come. But, deeper down, I was beginning to understand how death is a natural part of life, of living. Just like the decomposition of winter nurtures the seeds of spring.
I am beginning to understand how much my parents—and my best friend’s parents—taught us: Not just to admire and revere nature’s beauty, but to learn from its truth. A constant teacher and companion.
They couldn’t teach us everything, but they prepared us to be okay on our own, to be capable of finding our own way. Their absence is missed, and it also leaves space for a different, freer way of being in the world full of new possibilities. Like the wide open blue sky, the day after heavy rains.
I felt it at my core.
She’ll be okay.
And when it’s time for my Dad to go, I’ll be okay too.
May you attune to the cycle of life this week.
Love,
Jules
P.S. Read Crossing Over: Part 1
Nature has so much to teach us when we are quiet enough and present enough to listen, feel, and comprehend.
Thank you!
just crying in a coffee shop over here 🤍 Thank you for these beautiful words, Jules