Photo by Anna Shvets
This week we sit in limbo, between death and life, as many cultures observe celebrations of honoring. Honoring the ones who have become ancestors, who have gone before.
When I was a little girl, our church celebrated All Saints Day with a lot of fanfare. I was young, so it seemed like a big production to me. There was a rich red and gold banner, with names on it of those the church had lost in the year prior, and a procession down the pretty short aisle involving the choir, whoever had volunteered to bear the banner that year, and our pastors - and I think some trumpets. Maybe it actually was a production beyond the bias of my youthful gaze. It was ritualistic.
The congregation would sing, “For All the Saints,” one of those songs that can only be sung once a year, Granddad’s deep voice reverberating on one side, Mom’s melodic notes drifting over, Dad’s tenor complimenting, and Granny’s tone-deaf attempts making up the quartet that surrounded my brother and me.
You could feel the electricity buzzing in the air. When I was young, I didn’t know how to describe it. Now I might say, the power of sharing a ritual. The raw emotion behind acknowledging loss.
I always knew “the saints” - the whole purpose of this Sunday- were people who had died. I never imagined that any of my people would join that honored group, though.
It was difficult when a once vibrant person who sat in a pew next to me every Sunday was reduced to a name on that red banner the year Granny died.
Already steeped in the tradition of All Saints growing up and connected to it through my Polish roots - also believing Granny had been a saint of sorts, perhaps the patron saint of giving sweets to grandchildren - I started to go light a candle on her grave.
There was something beautiful about the wintery juxtaposition between early November, which was reliably windy, and that candle flame swaying back and forth.
I barely remember seeing Granddad’s name sewn onto that banner, in juxtaposition. It seems that closure can come to us in many different ways. I ran into an old friend’s mom at a Halloween party the other night, where I was dressed as a very convincing Minnie Mouse.
She asked if I still played the piano(no, but I wish) and mentioned to some of our other friends that she had attended the church where I would play a few times when I was little with her own daughter.
Your granddad, she said. He was such a dear. I came to the church, you know. When he died.
At that moment, I remembered. I saw her face in my mind’s eye, on that day, saying how incredibly sorry she was, how much she had loved him. I remember now, I said, tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes.
Trying to access the memory of that day is like trying to see out beyond the edges of binocular lenses while your eyes are still stuck to the little holes you’re peeping through. The edges of my memory are just blurry and black. I remember one whole event after the service - safe in my godfather’s arms - and the rest is just a black blur.
The memory is funny like that. I guess it’s just trying to protect me from having to remember at all.
So many autumns have passed since he did that it was a blessing to hear someone recount how much they just loved him to me. Sometimes it feels like the ones that have left are just figments of my imagination, crackling in and out of existence like little holograms as I try to keep their memories alive.
This All Saints Day, I’m thinking about all of those who have no one to remember them. Those who don’t know where their loved ones lie. Those who are suspected but not confirmed dead.
I think the worst thing may be to exist in a kind of limbo. Death, and the rituals we as a society have around it, are wildly important. We may argue that death is sad, and it is.
Sometimes death is also too early, tragic, en masse, and a slew of other adjectives that are sometimes not enough and often too much for the heart to bear - although I suspect there is not a lot the love of the human heart could not bear.
To be able to find closure - speaking as someone who loves closure - is important. It allows us to begin to move on. Do you know that feeling you have after a funeral? A sense of relief, almost? It’s finally become real. All of the people are gone. The casseroles are all there is left to keep you company.
The initial shock of burying someone you thought would live forever has passed. You did it. Now, stretching out in front of you is the time to live with it. That time is often riddled with uncertainty and fear, but here you are. You will do it. You’ll find closure, and then grief, and closure, and grief, slowly growing around your new reality day by day.
As we move more deeply into autumn, and then winter, I invite us to embrace the uncertainty - the liminal, limbo spaces- that come with life. To be excessively kind to ourselves. Remember that the greatest grief comes from love. Trust that light will come again while we sink more deeply into this season of letting go.
Here’s my piece from Halloween/All Saints Day last year!
Reflection Questions
What are you ready to let go of as we move into the last few months of the year?
What is no longer serving you?
What qualities would you like to invite into your life in the coming months?
How can you embody the season of autumn?