It's Hard Being Wedded to the Dead
I stood in our
Memory Garden at Church last week, surveying the space. We clear the renegade
spouts that have taken root through the summer and trim the bushes as we ready
the Garden for fall and winter. I pinched a few dead flowers from their stems.
Even at the grave we make our song, "Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia."
A neighborhood
cat who enjoys our church grounds joined me in the Garden, rolling joyfully in the
newly-spread mulch. On the very edge of the memorial marker, I saw a chipmunk
peep over the granite edge, deciding which creature, the human or the cat, would be the bigger
threat to its survival.
It apparently decided neither of us looked particularly threatening, so it busily buried an acorn. I presume for a later meal.
Even in the
midst of death, life exists.
One of the names
we will read at the end of the service would have enjoyed this moment. She
loved nature, all its wildness and movement. I still miss her.
I miss many of
the names listed on this marker. I’ve buried all of them, and each year, we add
one or two or four or several more names. The numbers don't increase the grief as much as give it a different weight in my soul.
All these names will
be spoken aloud on Thursday evening, as we light candles for each of them in
the dark Kentucky night.
All Souls’ Day
is one of those holy days of the church that gets slightly ignored. It is the
third and final day of the Fall Triduum, the three holy days of All Hallows’
Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day, three days that remind us of the
waning light of our human life and that the apostrophe lessons in grammar
classes really do matter.
Its official
name in the Episcopal Church is the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed. I
like All Souls’ Day and will remain unpersuaded that a longer, more complicated
title for the day is useful. The roots of the day are found in the practice of
having Masses for the souls of the dead on the anniversary of their death. Over centuries
this became conflated with the practice of praying souls out of purgatory and
other abuses associated with Masses for the dead.
The abuses are mostly gone. Yet the day
remains.
On a very basic
level, I think it’s an important day to commemorate because grief needs a place
to be welcome. We don’t suddenly stop grieving because our loved ones have been
dead a year or a decade or whatever random time stamp we humans desperately
develop to control the wildness and unpredictability of grief. Our ancestors who had a church service on the
anniversary of the death of a loved one were making space for grief, welcoming
her again to the table, and reminding themselves that it’s okay still to miss
them.
That we remember
still loving and missing our family and friends who have died is welcome in the
emotions of God. Our culture treats grief as an
emotion slightly ignored and almost irrelevant after a certain amount of time.
Yet it isn’t.
Grief becomes
part of our bones. A certain smell can bring us back to childhood days in our
grandmother’s kitchen when we gathered for Sunday dinners of fried chicken and
mashed potatoes, and we remember the people no longer alive. Seeing the reds and oranges of autumn leaves as we drive through a mountain pass on our way to another church meeting brings forth in us the words, “You know, he always
loved the mountains in fall as we remember a dead colleague.” A courageous chipmunk and lazy cat stir the image
of a woman who would love them both. I can almost…almost... hear her laugh on this
unusually warm autumn day.
Grief becomes
part of us when someone we love dies. We are wedded to it, mostly unwillingly,
like a bride forced to marry a man she’s never met and does not love. But the transaction
has happened, and here we stand, remembering those whom we love but see no
longer. And on this day, we have the holy space and time to grieve.
I hope you find
a place to remember them today, to say their names aloud – those you love still
who have died whose voice you miss or whose laugh seems to fade over the years. Maybe a church service. Maybe a visit to a place they loved. Maybe their grave.
Take today and visit with grief and God. Maybe you will cry.
Maybe you will laugh. Maybe you will do both.
I hope the day
shakes loose some grief and in that moment, you feel the connection of love
across the ages that joins the living to the dead in Eternal Life. Maybe you feel anger and
hate, too. Grief is complicated in its expression because humans are
complicated.
I hope this day
reminds us grief, while often unwelcomed, is part of the intricate experience
of being human. We, whether we like it or not, are wedded to the living and the
dead in our love, anger, joy, and sorrow.
This is part of
the communion of saints. And on this one, lovely, challenging holy day, we come
before God, standing with our grief, and She blesses us in our marriage to the deep intricacies of our human experience.
It Is Hard Being
Wedded to the Dead
– Jan Richardson
It is hard
being wedded
to the dead;
they make different
claims,
offer comforts
that do not feel
comfortable
at the first.
They do not let
you
remain numb.
Neither do they
allow you
to languish
forever
in your grief.
They will
safeguard
your sorrow
but will not
permit
that it should
become
your new country,
your home.
They knew you
first
in joy,
in delight,
and though they
will be patient
when you travel
by other roads,
it is here
that they will
wait
for you,
here they can
best
be found
where the river
runs deep
with gladness,
the water over
each stone
singing your
unforgotten
name.
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