A week ago, my cousin’s son Jake died after a terrible illness. He was twenty-four. Talented. Creative. Loved. The kind of person who did not know an enemy. I did not know him personally. I knew of him. But I knew my cousin. We are family.
His funeral was in Napa, and because I was in California, my family asked if I was coming along. I hesitated, though I could not understand why. I knew I should go. I could go. I wanted to go. Still, something held me back.
At the very last minute, I threw on a black dress and got in the car.
We drove two hours to the vineyard where the funeral would be held. When we turned in, a rush moved through me. More than forty years disappeared. Someone I loved dearly had died. He was from that same area. He was the same age as this young man. The grief was palpable. I remembered it. I felt it.
And in that moment, I understood the hesitation.
The memory. The pain. The sorrow. The letting go. His family standing inside a grief so deep it could be felt to the bone.
The vineyard stretched around us. Rows of grapes, full and sun-kissed, gathering the sweetness of time. Green slowly giving way to deep purple. Still becoming.
And there it was—the reminder that what is becoming can already hold so much beauty, like the grapes ripening on the vine, carrying within them what the season promised.
Some do not finish becoming. They remain with us—in the way we remember, in the way we see, in the places our hearts return.
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