For Diana

We used to make lists together of the people we wanted as our bridesmaids and groomsmen and the places outdoors we thought would make natural wedding sites. We wondered if we could have a wedding barefoot, or halfway up a mountain, or in some way floating, and we wondered how we could possibly include all the people we loved and still have it be graceful, a non-material event. To avoid the trappings of materialism, Diana would have found a way to hand craft all the table settings herself, to cook the cooscoos and the veggie quiches and the lentil meringues beforehand with her Portland friends, to distill the wine from scratch, and for the attire, to make every dress in the wedding party, finding the fabric and sewing different sizes, with personally designed labels for each bridesmaid. Of course a non-material wedding for Diana could have just as easily ended up meaning a naked, or no-material wedding. Diana loved nature in all of its forms. And this might have been one way to keep the ceremony small.

As an alternative, if our weddings never materialized, we imagined going to Abigail's, embarrassing her and her hubby by appearing as the two cranky old sisters; Abi would be 20-something and gorgeous, and we'd be crooked and somehow 96, and after sending her off on a honeymoon to Hawaii we'd go back to our creaky old house of 96 scrawny old cats and we'd grouse at each other from our parallel rocking chairs as we cheated at Old Maid. Friends would occasionally come and shake their heads at what freaks we'd become, but we imagined we would at least be freaks together.

We imagined all sorts of possibilities: we imagined what sort of doctor she might become, practicing in an African village, or thriving in a more urban setting with oncology patients, or becoming some sort of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman for a small rural town with horses, or maybe geckoes, or newts.

I mention these reveries not to dwell on what Diana never got to do, but to point out that some people never even imagine the possibilities of their lives, let alone go after them. And Diana did both. To do this is to live well, and fully. It's the reason she discovered the Pacific Northwest and bought a house there, it's the reason she finally got into the med school of her choice, it's the reason she summitted Mt. Hood, twice, and it's the reason she admired and cultivated so many different friends, so many of whom are still here and part of her now. It's the reason she was happy.

It is also the reason that among everything I feel right now, I can't, on Diana's behalf, be angry. I feel the loss of her hugely, but when I look at the arc of her life, I will not believe that she has lost: she got more out of her 29 years than some people ever get out of a century, and she didn't - she refused to - miss out on much. Diana was a woman who felt with her whole self, who knew her mind and then spoke it, so much so that we used to worry that she wore her heart too much on her sleeve, that she rushed into things, that she was all there in front of people, at once, whether or not they were ready to receive her. Sometimes I would try to convince Diana that less is more, but now I am glad I am comforted that she lived in a more-is-more kind of way. Because she sent out and shared a lot of energy; she savored her life and took little for granted.

Anyone who hopes I'm not saying this simply to make us feel better need only remember a few signature things about my sister: remember how if you said something she thought was funny, she would insist that you repeat it for everyone else, even if it wasn't funny, or even if everyone else had already heard it? And she would play the random messages you left on her answering machine for other people, whether or not what you said on them was particularly unremarkable, or meant just for her. And if you told her you loved someone, she would say, "Well, have you told HIM how you feel?" And if you told her you were having a problem at work, she would say, "Well, what are you going to DO about it?" Her advice was not always good advice, but it was always Diana advice, which is to say: bold and heartfelt.

I bet all of us here know exactly how much Diana loved us, because if she wasn't sending us a shirt, a necklace, a card, a tape, random stuff in the mail throughout the year just in the act of being a good sister or friend, she was telling us she loved us directly. And we would sometimes be bold enough to tell her back. The last time I talked to Diana on the phone, I told her that I loved her, too; it was kind of embarrassing, but I will always be glad that I did.

So Diana was a sponge for living, for soaking it up, pouring it out, and then soaking it up some more. Even when fully asnooze, Diana would accumulate experiences. She was an accomplished sleepwalker, able to conduct entire conversations or go on roving adventures while catching up on rest. There was her youthful excursion in Disney World's Polynesian Village involving the backbrace, the tee shirt, and the elevator, but my favorite sleeping story of her happened when we were sharing a small hotel bed the night before I was to run the Chicago marathon. Dad and Diana had flown in from the East and West for moral support, and Diana's friend Kevin, who was studying in Chicago, had joined us also. Sometime during the deep of the night before the race, when Dad was out cold in the bed next to us and Kevin was sound asleep somewhere on the floor, a gentle but solid patting on my back woke me up. I rolled over to see Diana dreaming with her big blue eyes wide open, staring at me with wide-open affection. She kept patting and patting my back with the palm of her hand, communicating intense and wordless support for my sleeping process and my mission the next day. She was, herself, totally asleep. There was no interacting with her. But it was the clearest sense I ever got that my sister loved me and was proud of me.

This episode is a comfort to remember but also, maybe, preparation because one thing we will have to get used to is accepting Diana as a subtler, non-verbal presence in our lives. If she's not too busy shmoozing with others in some storybook heaven, re-connecting people she once knew and making new alliances with people she discovers some of us once knew, then she will in the very least be in all the places and people she loved, leading us to the spirit in other living things as we look for hers.

In one of our cross-country phone conversations this past year, Diana and I were contemplating a friend's idea that all of us living had either new or old souls. I told her my soul felt old, for better or for worse, and she said "Well, I'm definitely a new soul." She declared that this was clearly her first time through, and was happy to hear that I thought she was probably right. I guess our whole conversation comfortably presupposed reincarnation, but from Diana's point of view, we could simply think of our souls in terms of recycling. For the rest of our lives, I'm sure we will all be toying with some form of the riddle: if I were Diana, how or where would I reappear? Where would my energy go next?

We who are grieving my sister have been experiencing a pretty surreal two weeks; minutes feel very slow or very still, or fast all about us but then too static to be forward; and the places we are used to seeing look different, alternately dull and exquisite, full, but then with holes. I feel the knuckle I knocked on a dock two weeks ago and I think, "How can my sister have disappeared in less than the time it has taken for this bruise to go away?" I look down from an airplane at separately lit cities and I think, "How do people communicate at all?" And then there is my panic that I will get the memories wrong, that the past has suddenly become elusive and that every time I dip into it for the details of my sister I will keep losing her, again and again. We have all been feeling outside time, and space.

But maybe we must all feel this disorientation in order to conceive that there is such a state outside of this time and this space and that not only grief but love, and an entire spirit, can live there. We need to keep imagining the possibilities not only of our own lives, but also of our own after-lives.

Diana was a free spirit, and now she is a free spirit. A free, spirit. If we can fully conceive of that, if we can imagine that freedom to be anything, anywhere, everywhere maybe we will be better able to accept the end of what was a very special era, and the mystery that surrounds us now.