Renewal

When our kids were young, the family tradition on Easter weekend included an egg hunt. From the mid-seventies through the mid-nineties there were plenty of young cousins happy to scramble about some relation's yard in pursuit of plastic eggs filled with candy or money. Then it stopped. There were no young ones around. Easter time morphed into spring break for the college crowd.
The oldest cousins now have kids of their own.
2006 saw the hunt revived with five descended from three of the original crew.
The day couldn't have been more beautiful. Everyone was a winner. When all the eggs had been retrieved, each got a present to boot. It was like Easter, Christmas and Halloween all melded into one intense potentially legendary memory.
The bittersweet undercurrent to the day was this – it was the first anniversary of my nephew's death.
As the sun set, we all gathered around the tree where his ashes had been buried earlier that day. His mother and father spoke of their certainty that he was present – still communicating. Their pain is raw and wildly palpable.
Joan Didion who also lost her daughter last year, sent a note that was read aloud under the tree.
Celebrate and cherish the living for it is in that celebration that our love for those lost becomes clear.

Click here for a slide show Easter Saturday