It was a long week.

No. It was a long couple of months.

Wrong again. It was a long year.

A good year, but a hard year. That’s what makes it long. So much has occurred in nine months it’s hard to believe it is all part of one calendar year. Unlike those nine months of growing a baby that seem to both drag on forever and race by too quickly, this was not a year of anticipation, but surprise blows.

With the hard has come so much richness, though. It always works that way, doesn’t it? There are things we could never experience or appreciate without having been through the fire.

Like this weekend.

We buried my dad on Friday, celebrated his life on Saturday and remembered him on his birthday on Sunday with iced tea, wavy potato chips, onion dip, BBQ pulled pork sandwiches, watermelon and cheesecake.  We threw in a salad, too, even though he’d have eaten none of it.

All along the journey we unearthed old and new friendships as the weight of his passing brought forth the many, many people who called him friend. But it went deeper than that. So many grown up kids surfaced who called him dad or uncle because that is what he was to them. Some of those now-adults I had never crossed paths with until now. What a blessing it was to finally meet my other sisters and brothers and the friends my dad called family.

There were so many of them, but I’m not surprised one bit. He was a gap-filler. A man who knew what it was like to have a father who was the farthest thing from a good father. It made my dad become the kind of guy who easily stepped into the lives of so many kids as they did the hard job of growing up.

And many of them descended on my house, filling gaps as they came. It was the best.

We had my brother’s family in one room with one of my kids who’s main goal in life was to be with his two year old cousin. My sister, husband and I were in the kid’s room. Her fiancé was in the guest bedroom. One of our brothers from another mother was on the couch and my mama-in-law was next door. Oh… and my other kid was in the garage. Don’t cry for him. He lived out there for a week once. We finally had to order him to move back into the house with the rest of the family.

Those were just the people sleeping at my house. We were bursting at the seams from morning until night in tight spaces with familiar faces. A rich and wild roller coaster ride, to be sure.

After Saturday morning’s memorial service we wanted to go to the beach. It was a very hot day and we all really needed some staring at the ocean time. No deal. There was the annual woody and classic car festival at our main beach. Between that and the blazing hot weather, there were negative parking spots up and down the whole coast. So we went home.

I don’t have air conditioning, but they all came anyway. We sat around sweating and talking and sweating some more. Everyone stayed downstairs because when it’s really hot, my upstairs becomes equivalent to the outer part of hell. There were people on the floor, on the patio, in our tiny yard and sitting on the front lawn, gazing at the clog of cars we graced our street with, cold drinks in hand.

The funny thing was that no one left unless they had to– even though it just kept getting warmer and warmer in my house. The need for connected roots, ones that had my dad in common, trumped even the need for a cool place of reprieve. That’s what family does. They hang in there together even when it things really heat up.

My extended family is a mix of almost all non-blood relatives. It’s a family we built over decades that has very little to do with genealogies. Growing up, my brother, sister and I had no aunts or uncles and no cousins. The families we did life with became our aunts and uncles and cousins. This transition from friend to family is still almost instant with us because it’s how we were raised.

One “aunt” flew in from the Pacific Northwest. Our “cousins” came from Phoenix and Hawaii and locally. Old friends who are brothers and sisters flew in from Arizona and Tennessee or drove hours through traffic from San Diego, LA and Orange Counties. Even my husband’s sweet aunt and uncle made the long drive down from Truckee, having spent time with my dad this past December when we all gathered for my father-in-law’s passing.

Our other “sister” who lives close and has spent countless evenings and weekends here at the same time as my dad came, too, helping with kids and croissants and comedy. At one point she had all the sisters singing a chorus of Super Mario Brothers as we shredded chicken and sliced watermelon for the many hungry mouths. The friends we are now doing life with, just like our parents did, came also. My dad has been to at least one of each of my friend’s kid’s birthdays. He was that other grandpa who was always happy to be around.

So you see, they came not for us. They came for Dad.

He built a family that included others with no pretension or prerequisites. He used to stay up late with us when we were teenagers, running around crazy with us, joining us after midnight at local eateries on school nights and guest starring in our outlandish movies we would produce in the wee hours of morning. And he still had to get up and work in the morning. We were a safe house for kids who were night owls. Most parents with curfew restrictions would lift them if they knew their teenagers would be at the Kagamaster house.

Now these kids are older. Some have children of their own. Most have had visits from my dad along the way. If he happened to be in their neck of the woods you’d better believe he’d try to stop by.

And so they came, the ones who could, to say goodbye together. Their parents came, too, our aunts and uncles who lost a brother as well as a friend. The memorial just wasn’t enough. They needed a good old-fashioned Kagamaster hang out.

So they came here. To my house.

I love having a full house. I love when people feel comfortable enough to lay on my floor or dig through my fridge without asking. My husband and I learned a long time ago that the more open handed we are with what we have, there will always be more than enough to go around– enough food, enough beds and enough energy to give people what they need. In this case, these folks just needed to be together.

We were exhausted emotionally before that day even started and with the heat, everyone was sapped. But you know what? When that last, unexpected wave of people came through the door at 8:15pm and I thought I might melt into the floor in a puddle of tired, something happened when we gave up our own need for rest in order to serve the need in others for connection: we were blessed.

Blessed with old stories and new ones we’d never heard. Blessed by food and flowers and funny memories. Our neighbor, right at the perfect moment, brought over a South African liquor that had a hilarious story attached to my dad. It was so funny because some of our crew had been digging for something special to drink at that very moment and it was as if Dad himself planned it. He always jumped at the chance to run to the store for anything we even sort of needed.

So we all toasted to Dad.

The noise died down for that brief moment as we all raised a glass together. We were spent and hot, but the happiness of that unusual gathering filled us with a last drop of energy to give back to to our family who needed it. Then the cousins present lined up by age for a rare group photo, one I will be so grateful for in years to come. My dad would have loved that more than anything. All the kids together.

For that to happen again someone else will have to die. I think we’d rather skip that, thanks.

The night began to die down as did our physical reserves. So my husband did what any normal person would do to dearly loved family members. He turned off all the lights and helped them out the door. It was awesome.

We said our goodbyes and those of us left to overfill the beds in my house lay in the dark for a few moments, our bodies sinking into the old carpet, our minds too full to think of anything new.

I wish I could say we quietly went off to bed, weary but satisfied. No. That would be so un-Kagamaster of us. Even though we tried to go to bed, it just didn’t happen.

After about a minute, I forced myself up to marinade and set the pork to cook all night for our lunch the next day. I’d forgotten about that until the moment the front door closed. Dad loved my BBQ pulled pork so much he and I took over Thanksgiving with it last year, refusing to make turkey when pulled pork is so much tastier. We were going to do it again this year, but he left before we could stage our coop.

After I set the beast to roast, we made good use of our time and our mushy brains by watching viral YouTube videos like Japanese Ski Resort Pranks and Gimme Pizza Slow, a creepy slow-mo version of the worst Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen rap video ever made. We wasted time talking and laughing at stupid things together until we just couldn’t stay awake for another minute. Then we slept as late as our bodies and little nephew would allow before starting the fun all over again. That’s really what the weekend was about because that’s what my dad was about.

He would have loved it.