It was a grey January morning as I climbed into my black 1997 Nissan Altima and headed north; warmer and damper that it should be at this time of the year. It was a Friday morning of a very busy week. Too many nights I had been out late at meetings and up early the next morning for more meetings.

On a good day, the lack of sleep would left me a little more distracted than normal, but with so much going on in my mind from all the meetings, and with the day ahead of me, I was even more distracted than normal. I left a little later than I would have left if I were heading to the office, but still it was very close to the morning commute. I left the radio off to ruminate, to work on composing various blog posts and emails in my mind. I reached for the silver travel mug, full of black decaf coffee. In the coffee cup holders were various receipts, my cellphone, but not the travel mug.

On one trip, even more momentous than this trip, I had left a coffee cup on top of the car. It had stayed up there for miles, several of which were on the parkway. I was on the parkway again, and I listened for by travel mug sliding around on the roof. It was a different shape and if I had driven off with it on the roof, it would probably be laying in the driveway back home. More likely, it was on the coffee table in the living room.

I had about a quarter of a tank of gas and thought about the best place to get gas, and perhaps a cup of coffee. I knew that the further north I got, the less expensive gas was likely to be. I wanted coffee, but just a little, not enough so that I would shift uncomfortably in my seat at the funeral home during the service.

In Greenfield, the GPS on my cellphone said to head north. I knew that the funeral home was to the east, but the best gas station was to the west. I headed west, filled up the tank, got a small cup of black decaf, and then headed east on the slower and more direct route. This was through town and would bring back more memories.

At one point on my blog, I retraced some of William Least Heat Moon's travels using Google Maps, and any blog posts or news stories I could find to create a Virtual Blue Highway. The feeling of blue highways came back to me. There was the music store where my folks had bought me my first clarinet. Down this street was the funeral home where we paid our final respects to one of my aunts. Up this street was a toy store we would sometimes stop at on my way to that aunt's house. I passed a neighborhood where cousins used to live. I saw some of the fancy old buildings, now deteriorating, along the way that had always caught my imagination on my trips to visit relatives.

Heading east on the Mohawk trail, I drove through Gill, past Turner's Falls; another important childhood memory. The words of Wally Lamb came to me, "I know this much is true". I felt as if I was accessing some fundamental truth about myself. I passed the road that headed up to another late aunt's house, past the church where we said our final goodbyes to her, not far from the farm my mother grew up on.

I crossed the French King Bridge. There was no traffic in the middle of this dreary morning. I slowed down so I could get a good view up the Connecticut River. There was the rock in the middle of the river that I had heard stories of my aunts and uncles swimming out to during warm summer days of their childhood.

This is bayt. This is home; not just home as in some suburban dwelling we return to after a long hard day at work, but ancestral homeland; patterns of life inherited; thought patterns, patterns of DNA.

Two months ago was my mother's memorial service in the town I grew up in. We had a nor'easter that prevented me from making it, but many friends and relatives were there. This morning, I was going to the funeral service for her niece, my cousin. I first heard about my cousin's illness during the planning for my mother's memorial. As I traveled the final miles to the funeral home I wondered who would be there.

I was traveling alone. My wife had to work. My daughters had school. My sister would be there, as would various cousins. My mother would not be there, to explain, in her shaking voice who each person was or how they were related.

How are we all related? We are all stardust. Hydrogen atoms fused together with others in stellar reactors lightyears and centuries away, making heavier elements, stardust, which became the building blocks of who we are. Some of these atoms combined into molecules, combined into living cells, passed on from my mother to me. The cells have died, the molecules have moved on, but the patterns remain, in our neurons, in our DNA.

These are the patterns of the lives of my relatives that worked in the tool shops and paper mills in the Connecticut River Valley. My ancestors settled here, having come from the Canadian coast, and stopping along the way in different New England towns.

Northfield, Orange, Athol, Millers Falls, Turners Falls, Lake Pleasant; it is not these towns themselves, but something they represent; hard work mingled with joyful recreation, melded together with compassion for neighbors. It is what makes up our lives, and what we remember when we gather to say our final goodbyes.

The funeral was familiar. The same comfortable words, the same friends and relatives, the same motions. The cemetery was where my aunt and uncle are buried. The reception was at the same community center that hosted the reception after my aunt's funeral, and the family stories told by the surviving cousins were similar stories as have been told at funeral receptions for decades.

I know this much is true, this is bayt, we are stardust.

Rest In Peace, Cousin Linda