Why Remember Loss?

A dim hallway with framed photos hanging on the wall. Photo by Yusuf Evli on Unsplash.

My family’s house burned down thirteen years ago in the month of August. It was Friday the 13th. I know, right?

Whenever that time of year rolls around again, I have learned it is important to stop and remember. The first year, we gathered in what had been our living room and shared communion with friends and family. It was a tangible way to honor the loss and enact our hope and prayer for renewal and restoration.  

But after that, it felt like I was supposed to move on. It felt melodramatic to keep pausing to acknowledge such an awful anniversary. And life went on. We’d sold the rebuilt home and had a beautiful new home. We’d replaced almost everything that was replaceable. It also felt a little silly to keep remembering the fire. I mean, come on. It was just stuff. No one died. Others had lost family, gotten seriously ill, had endured much more.

But as hard as I tried to convince myself to just move on, my soul wouldn’t let me. Every year, I’d stay up late, hair wet from a shower and dressed in oversized t-shirts trying to figure out how to feel. And how I felt was sad, lonely, confused. And simultaneously grateful for the grace and strength to endure, rebuild, and heal.

So, for the past few years, I’ve invited my family to pause in one way or another to mark a day of loss. A day, one of several, about which there is, and must be, a distinct ‘before’ and ‘after.’ Sometimes we travel. Sometimes I write a note or give a trinket to celebrate life. I always light a candle. We always share a good meal.

These are such simple things to give our bodies and souls breathing room to remember that before exists and after does, too. Life goes on. Restoration and healing are possible though not promised. And there is power in remembering. There’s a reason that’s such a common instruction in sacred texts including the Old and New Testaments.

 The losses you’re invited to remember yearly might be the death of a parent, a broken relationship, a miscarriage, or the complicated jumble of joy and grief that is adoption. Whatever your grief, I hope you’ll know you are in good company in engaging it as often as you need. And while some sorrows must be remembered alone in the night when the rest of the world (including your household) sleep, most do best with some breathing room in the light with trustworthy others.

With care,
Terra

 Remember, you can preorder Hopeful Lament here.

I’m also planning some fun things like bonus readings, lunch and learns, giveaways, and more for anyone part of my book launch team. If you’d like to join me, sign up here.

What I’m watching:

I was thrilled when I saw Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens had a second season on Amazon. It is about an angel (Michael Sheen) who sometimes questions God’s methods and a demon (David Tennant (who is coming back as the 14th Dr Who in honor of the show’s 60th anniversary later this fall)) who isn’t as heartless as he pretends. But mostly, it’s about poking fun at the ways God and the Bible are sometimes misused by the people who proclaim the most love for both. Plus, it features Jon Hamm playing a role that he might have been born for as the most obnoxious angel Gabriel imaginable.

What I’m listening to:

Bono’s Surrender. I thought I knew most of what there was to know about U2 and was I wrong! They’re a band I grew up with and their music speaks to me even more than it did when I was young. I didn’t understand the extent to which they were informed by their faith when I was young. A kid from the rural south, I had no idea who the ‘mothers of the disappeared’ were that they were singing about. Now I know and I’m glad songs like that exist in the world, telling the truth about pain and oppression and honoring the courage of those who stand up to injustice even when it doesn’t seem to make a difference.

 And maybe because I’ve written (and lived) a book about grief, I’m struck by the ways Bono’s life is marked by loss and absence as much as by love and grace and friendship. He lost his mom suddenly at 14. His dad, his brother, and he, being proper Irish men addressed their sadness by radically suppressing it—they just stopped talking about Iris, how they missed her, what they’d loved about her. Because he was so young when she died, the habit of not talking about her meant that most of his memories of her got lost or fuzzy over the years. He’s found it important to try and resurrect them later in life to keep growing and becoming and healing.

I love that they seem to have managed to remain the friends they began as. I love that they’re still making music and telling the truth about love and justice and life. Here are the songs that form the table of contents. Also, if you haven’t watched a Sort of Homecoming on Disney Plus, I highly recommend it. Now, I really want to visit Ireland and swim in those icy waters. I’ve gotta say, I didn’t love David Letterman when he had his show on cable. He always struck me as a little condescending. But I’ve loved his Netflix interview show and he’s fantastic as the mediator, question asker, sightseer in Homecoming.

What I’m reading:

A Hole In the World is a thoughtful, achingly gorgeous book by Amanda Held Opelt, sister of the beloved late Rachel Held Evans.

It is an examination of her particular grief and the ways rituals for grieving well have been lost (or actively suppressed in some cases).

In the introduction, she writes, “This isn’t a DIY ritual renovation project. It’s not a five-step plan for bypassing your sorrow through sanctimonious ceremony…When we abandoned our rituals, we left a gaping hole in our experience of grief…A ritual is not magic…I picture rituals like smooth stones stretched across a rushing river. They provide the next right step across the torrent and set our bodies in motion…I needed an empty vessel for my grief. I needed time-honored traditions and tested rituals. I needed a next right step.” May it be so among us.

Read more here.

I’ll leave you with a blessing that I’ve been living with. This “proem” (prose-poem) by Brian Doyle as well as sharing it with directees recently. Take a few minutes with it—it’s well worth a little (or a lot of) prayerful attention:

If I was to ask you a question about where you are from,
And you were to ask me did I mean nativity or ethnicity or
Nationality or religious background, and I said no, I meant
What story, what amazement, what joy, what ocean, would
You be speechless? I don’t think so. I think you would wait
A moment to clear away all the orthodox answers, and then
You would say something like I am from people who dance
When they are sad, or I come from music I cannot run from,
Or I came through a broken door and it took me a long time
To stop trying to shatter it or repair it or inflict it on my kids.
You would say something like that, I think, if I asked gently
And we had the time to let all the other answers trundle past
Like the things we say when we actually have nothing to say.

-Brian Doyle