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July 21st was the 42nd anniversary of my and my wife Jane Califf’s 1979 wedding. 20 years later, in 1999, we had a 20th anniversary gathering in our backyard in northern New Jersey with about 50 of our closest friends and relations. We filmed that event, and last evening, for the first time in 22 years, we watched it.
We were all eyes and ears as the video showed the circle of participants. About a quarter of those present then are no longer alive. Everyone else, of course, was 22 years younger, some of whom, today, are having their significant life and medical issues. It was a startling reminder of the reality of mortality all of us must deal with.
In the video Jane and I re-read the vows we had taken 20 years before, and last evening we felt like we had done a pretty good job sticking to them. In the video we also each reflected out loud with our 20th anniversary thoughts and feelings, there together with those we considered part of our extended family, whether by blood or otherwise.
One of things I spoke about was the importance of connections — connections to family and friends, connections to the natural world, connections to those who have come before us, and connections to those coming after us. I said that our marriage was able to survive and deepen in large part because Jane and I consciously worked at maintaining all of those connections over the years.
In 1997, a couple years before this 20th wedding anniversary event, I wrote a poem about connections, Our Awesome Task. These were the…
