The wedding party was all there but one. Dad’s Dad-the best man- had died. The family, the friends, people who I had known since I was a child, people who I hade only met a few times but were names as familiar as my own came too. They had all come to help to celebrate, to lend a hand, to lend love. All these people were a part. Part of the creation of the reality of my parent’s lives: part of the support and love, sometimes the problem, sometimes the solution. They had come at other times to celebrate passages, births and deaths, weddings and graduations. My parents had done the same for them. Bound together by many threads, diverse, not all know to each other but there to say that Marie and Art had made a difference.

As I looked around at all these people, listened to the love and laughter it became apparent to me that my parent’s had fifty years together were shaped not only by each other but by these people as well. While my parent’s wedding anniversary was a celebration of their love for each other it was also a celebration made possible by this group. Had these people not existed, not formed and shared my parents lives-well- somehow their union was larger, more expansive because of all these people. Family, extended family, friends, co-workers, neighbors and church friends, though many had moved away they still came together. The web woven by my parent’s lives connected them all.

As I sat at my table I had a vision of all them all supporting Mom and Dad, lifting them up on a beautiful platform or bed with gilded fringe and flowers. These people lifted them up with out stretched arms in celebration of life, of love of a web well woven.