All that matters…

I have written here in recent weeks of place, of time.

But so much of our recent trip west had to do with people, with family—with a sister, brothers, their spouses, children—family I’ve long not seen, never less than loved, too long neglected, so often missed; and yet another sister, beyond those other siblings, herself absent.

I am myself the oldest of five, and I confess that while I often see my youngest brother, who himself lives conveniently in the same state, I have not seen my next younger brother in 12 years; his wife in 17; our youngest sister, since she married, moved to London, in 26 years. For her, for me, half her life ago; she then only then just beyond a girl; now a woman; a mother, mother of a daughter; a daughter to the very great credit of mother and father; those years between, those many years, my profound loss.

What had brought us all together, on the west coast of Washington’s Puget Sound, was the wedding of my niece, Courtney, older child of my younger brother Michael—he whom I’d not seen in 12 years—to fiancé Joe.

The wedding itself simple, but eminently elegant.

The reception a chance for me, my wife Karen, our daughter Siohbán; that sister Meghan, her husband Kevin; brother Michael and wife Carol; another brother, Patrick, and his wife, Dawnelle; nieces Courtney and Ellie, nephew Sean, and yet another, much younger nephew, Gavin, to tie time’s loose ends, as much as anyone could tie any number of years into so many hours.

But, ah, those hours, those, those glorious hours!

A father’s toast, heart-spoken and forever.

The mother of the bride plotting, beforehand, to sabotage a Polish tradition—one foreign to anyone but the bride herself, who had once worked in Poland—but a tradition sabotaged much to everyone’s amusement, especially, with more than a nod from that mom, to those of us at mom’s table.

A wedding preluded by deluge, consummated by rainbow.

The laughter. All that laughter. The love. All that love. All that evening. That night long.

And me, wishing I’d not lost these years, any lost memories.

But time is, of course, relative.

Einstein wrote as much, even as he saw time in terms of physics, of relativity itself.

And for me, time, too, is relative, decidedly relative.

My brother Mike, my sister Meghan, our youngest brother Patrick. Another sister, Moira, whom I much miss, much love, whom I only wish had joined us in Washington.

All five of us separated by time, by space, even as time itself continues to collapse, not respecting any one of us, not respecting time itself.

And, now, Courtney joining Joe.

A generation beyond ours joining hands.

Ensuring that all that matters, beyond us, beyond them, beyond anyone who ever calls any one of us mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle…is that this love, the one that binds, that which made us all of us, this one Saturday, one…that this love, in the end, still matters.

© 2011 by Dónal Kevin Gordon