June 27, 2024--Today we celebrate life

It’s been six months since January 27, 2024.

In “The Idea of Bobbi,” I had a section called “Celebration of Life.” I wrote:

Our wedding ceremony began with these words, “Today, we celebrate life.”

Our family plans a “Celebration of Life” in July with Bobbi in mind. Those will probably be the first words spoken at that celebration.

I’ve been thinking about what to say at the event, and today, I started writing.

I was right. Those will be the first words.

The draft

Today, we celebrate life.

Those were the first words in our wedding ceremony on August 30, 1970.

Bobbi and I wrote these words, and I’d like to read them and explain their meaning.

Today, we celebrate life.

Look at your neighbor
There in their eyes
You see reflected
Life in disguise
For life is the essence
Without shape or form
Or weight or dimension
Not cold and not warm
Life is just life
And that is enough
For us to enjoy.

Today, we celebrate life.

Our marriage ceremony was a formality. We’d declared ourselves married before that The ceremony was not for us, but for other people. It wasn’t a celebration of “our lives” but of life.

So today, Bobbi—who lives in me—and I invite you remember us by celebrating life.

We ask you to celebrate life not just today, but as often as you can remember to.

Don’t celebrate her life, or mine or even yours, but celebrate life!

Life is just life,
And that is enough.

Bobbi and I adapted our wedding service from the Scientology service. The idea of life we were celebrating was taken from Scientology. So let me explain what we meant.

The difference between a dead body and a living body is life.

That’s what we celebrate.

Life has no mass, energy, or location in space or in time.

Life is the essence of Being.

In the framework we lived by, Bobbi and I were beings with bodies and minds.

We knew ourselves as Beings. We forgot sometimes, but we always came back to that fundamental reality.

We were Beings. We were manifestations of life, independent of our bodies and minds.

Topic shift.

Bobbi got me hooked on Person of Interest around ten years ago. We must have watched it all five seasons thre or four or five times. Some episodes we’ve watched a dozen times.

She’d be watching it and I’d be on my computer, next to her in bed and she’d ask me a question about some plot detail, and I’d go to the POI Fandom Wiki to get the answer, and after a while I got hooked and started watching with her.

In one of the episodes leading up to the finale, two cops are in a bar, ruminating over someone’s unfortunate death and one says:

They say everybody dies alone.

But if you mean something to someone—if you help someone or love someone—if even a single person remembers you—then maybe you never really die at all.

That always struck the two of us as true. You never really die at all because life doesn’t die. Life might leave the body, but life doesn’t cease to exist.

Celebrate life.

I encourage you to go from this place, and remembering this day by celebrating life.

Whenever you think of it, celebrate life.

As long as you have life within you, celebrate life.

And maybe you and the people you love never really die at all.

Comments welcome

This is what I plan to write. If you have an idea or a correction, then…