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November 1 was All Saints Day and this coming Sunday is All Saints Sunday. On this Sunday, in the churches in which I served, we read the names of persons who, as we put it, “have gone before us,” along with the tolling of a bell or the lighting of a candle as each name was read.
This is indeed a holy day, a hallowed day, which the dictionary defines as “revering and honoring” our loved ones who have died. It is a celebration, a day of thanksgiving for the “communion of saints” who continue to have such a special place in our lives. It is this beautiful and appropriate focus we will have this coming Sunday.
But, as with nearly everything in life, there is also another side, one that we don’t talk about very much. In the midst of our thanksgiving and celebration, there is also a hollowness. Something feels empty, gone, missed.
In my book on loss and grief, healing and hope, I write about it this way:
It seemed that the further I got away from the deaths of those I had loved most, and the more I healed, the more I realized just how sad it is to leave what you don’t want to leave.
It was like holding a small bird in your hands. You know you can’t hold it forever; you have to let it go. So you slowly begin to lighten your grasp. However, you find it so difficult to take the last step, and open your hands wide enough for the bird to fly away.
What makes that final letting go so difficult? It is the reality that you are being forced to accept that which you do not want to accept: that the person you love so much is really gone, and is not coming back.
No matter how you cut it, death is not a problem to be solved. It stares you in the face and refuses to move. It separates you from those you love and need and never gives them back.
There will be new friendships, and there may be new loves, but a part of you remains gone, a part of your heart forever unable to move into the future because it refuses to forget and let go of its commitment to those you once loved and still love with all your heart.
Death leaves holes in our hearts that will never fully heal. We die if we naively cling to the notion that one day we will be totally healed, that one day we will again be as happy as we once were.
We can be happy again, but it will be different. To live again is not to return to the past, but to move into the future honestly admitting the pain we carry, accepting the way we have been changed. [When the Northern Lights Went Dark: My Journey through Loss and Grief to Healing and Hope, Amazon, pp. 253-254]
This dual emphasis, of hallowedness and hollowness, is captured well in the words of Kate Bowler: “Today we are drawn into remembrance, the complexity of love and loss both warms our hearts and chills our bones.”
Our culture is seemingly obsessed with the notion of “closure.” Yes, there are times in life when we just want something “to be gone,” like a cancer or a headache or an irritating person or a traffic jam on a highway. But loss and grief are different.
I remember a woman who had had a miscarriage explaining that she didn’t want to “get over it,” because she was the only person who had fully bonded with this new life, and if she quit remembering, then that small life would be truly forgotten and gone.
When someone who has died is no longer remembered then they are gone, they are truly dead. Yes, remembering hurts, but it is also what gives us our most profound joys in life and fills us with gratitude in the midst of the sorrow that continues. I love remembering Dad telling a story, and then bursting into his jolly laughter. I love remembering how, when I had gotten hurt as a child, Mom was always there to hold me and start the healing process.
We remember because that is how we know we have been loved, cared for, nourished, comforted, guided. That remembering also reminds us of pain and loss, but it is a suffering we carry always within our hearts that reminds us of the manifold ways God and our loved ones have been and continue to be a blessing in our lives.
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