De Los Muertos

The idea of a holiday that involved sugar skulls and graveyards used to make me very uncomfortable. But, to most of my Spanish-speaking friends, Dia de Los Muertos, November 1st and 2nd, isn't about fear and darkness, but rather a special time to remember with warmth, those who we love who are no longer with us physically but are forever in our hearts.

I think, regardless of who we are and when it's observed, there's something surprisingly healthy about setting aside a dedicated time to honor the memory of those who've gone before. And for me, the gentleness of the cooling air, the scent of apples, cinnamon, and pumpkin spice, and the rituals of the return of fall all play a part in triggering that time of remembrance for me.

Both of my grandmas died in autumn, many years apart. I never met either of my grandfathers. But for our family, death is neither something far away, or something we haven't experienced recently. We haven't had the luxury of feeling invincible to it. In the past few years, we've lost both my dad, rather slowly, and Dan's mom, unexpectedly. The pastor God used to help me recognize my calling, who hired me, trusted me, mentored me and cheered for me also passed away several Novembers ago. We have friends who lost their 17-year-old daughter this year. Grief is familiar. But also, grief is unpredictable, rash; grief lies to us, tricks us into thinking it's gone, only to return. Grief changes the lighting in the room. It makes our heads hurt and our stomachs ache and our bodies weary and heavy. The worst part is that skipping it isn't really an option. Just like the Bear Hunt book, you can't go over it, you can't go under it, you got to go through it. Numbing it or subduing it doesn't quite work because if you do it will randomly spill out in the most inconvenient of places just like cellulite escaping over the top of a pair of Spanx.

Eleanor would be in junior high now. We lost Eleanor one autumn. We're not sure when her tiny heart stopped beating. It was strong on November 1st, 2013, but it was gone by the day before the worst Thanksgiving of my life a few weeks later, when the OB ran the fetal doppler over my belly. Because this was my first wildly shocking wave of intense grief it seems to be the one that I weigh and understand all others by. Even while saying goodbye to my dad ten years later, I understood many of the things my body, mind and soul were doing because my feet were finding the groves along a path I'd gone down before.

As I looked back on my journey through grieving Eleanor I noticed something. Many people were there for me, grieving for or with me, taking care of my needs, praying, and honoring her memory. Some moved on from that quickly. Some said things that weren't helpful or were even accidentally hurtful. And others just distanced themselves. In retrospect, I realize that is probably because they didn't want to be the people who were accidentally hurtful, so they erred on the side of saying or doing nearly nothing and giving me space. 

With all of that in mind, this is going to sound terribly ungrateful. But I was mad a lot. I felt let down and abandoned in my grief at times. But now that this path called grief has become more familiar, I think I know what was going on with me and everyone else. Grief causes deep pits in our yard (and by yard I think I mean heart). Everyone's got some pits going on at all times. Maybe it's because our babies graduated and so our identity as parents is changing. Maybe because we changed churches or schools, or workplaces, or because Coldplay said they aren't making any new albums, or the twenty book series we were emotionally involved in ended, or we got divorced or broke up with someone, got fired, lost a pet or a dream. Some people's pits are relatively easy to refill. But when we lose a spouse, a parent, or a child that pit is BOTTOMLESS. And yes, I know that the Sunday school answer is "Jesus will fill it" and I do believe He's the ultimate answer...but let's not pretend this hole is getting filled entirely this side of eternity. The people around us may try to help us shovel some of their extra into our pit to help us try to fill it in. Some people close to us have little to share...because they're grieving too, probably even over the same loss. Others have more to give. Some just don't know how...they've never been taught. But no matter how much anyone tries to share in filling up this hole, it is, like I said, BOTTOMLESS, and it just won't ever be enough. We will still hurt. We still have to grieve.

And sometimes that makes us mad. For me, I eventually learned that grief was distorting my view of reality. But that took years and years, and some therapy, distance, and experience at being the one on the other end of grief, trying to help fill in some of those pits for others.

As a pastor, I've had to make peace with knowing that I can't fill a bottomless pit, otherwise I would have burnt out years ago.

I wish I knew how to make the ache go away. There's no one right, one size fits all piece of advice to give.

But, for my fellow WASP friends, I do think we can learn from the way some of the other cultures we're surrounded with seem to make friends with their grief. Look it straight in the eye. Call it what it is. Death. The way pictures of loved ones don't need to be hidden just because they might "make someone sad" or feel uncomfortable. The way memories are celebrated as a way of acknowledging someone did and still does, exist. To laugh when a memory makes us laugh and cry when the ache of that bottomless emptiness makes us cry. 

And I would also encourage all of us to remember to help shovel some of what we have into the gaps for those with especially large holes in their hearts. And to be patient with them when we both realize they will still feel empty sometimes.