So, as some of you know, this month was my turn to give the reflection at our Dublin ACE Fellowship mass. It was a mass for remembrance... This is what I came up with:
Elizabeth Langdon was not a traditional woman. Don’t get me wrong, she was born into loving and supportive family, named after her mother and grandmother. She worked her way through her education, found gainful employment, was married, and started a family of her own. But when she was widowed with three young children, she opted to continue her job, becoming a single working mother in 1955. And when her children were grown, starting families of their own, she became Grammy, and she became a pillar in the lives of her grandchildren.
She taught me to play tic-tac-toe, and more specifically, she taught me how to beat my older brother at tic-tac-toe. She taught me how to knit and sew. She taught me to appreciate reading and literature. She taught me to be curious. She taught me how to play cards. And I guarantee that every time I play poker, I think of her. She worked until she was nearly 70 and continued part-time beyond that, living independently in the community she’d settled in years before. And when she passed away, it was as she had lived her whole life, on her own terms.
Grammy was my idle, my mentor, and I was her namesake. I felt an obligation to uphold the service she’d done by carrying the name with pride, with dignity, with unerring confidence and strength. Her passing was one of the first losses I experienced. I handled it much as I assume other soon-to-be high school seniors do: with all the dignity and bravado of someone who knew absolutely everything about life… Which, retrospectively, was actually rather little.
I struggled with the loss. It hurt in the summer when we would normally visit her. It hurt at Christmas, on her birthday, on my birthday, and at Thanksgiving. And for the longest time, I could not move beyond the empty feeling, the void left when she was physically no longer there. I coveted the small trinkets she’d given me, more because I knew she’d never give me any more than because they held specific meaning. I was sad. And I mourned. And I feared that if I let go of the sadness that she would be gone. And that I would forget her. That she would be somehow lost.
And then I was visiting my cousin. And we played tic-tac-toe… That was the first time I recognised how much she had given me. How much of what she had done was enduring. How much of her was in me. And slowly, I found a way to celebrate who she was that didn’t make me sad. That wasn’t a sense of loss but a sense of peace.
My views on life and death are constantly in flux. At work, I’m surrounded by people struggling to live and struggling to die. I pronounce death about once a week. I’ve watched people struggle to cope with end-stage disease and terminal diagnoses, and I’ve told people that they are dying. And there is no such thing as death becoming easy. The dead move on, and it feels that we are often left to pick up the pieces when they’ve gone. To quote tv’s bleeding heart doctor, “dying is easy, living is hard.”
We mourn all the time. We mourn loss of time. We mourn changes in relationships. We mourn changes in the places we live, in the people we know, in the seasons, and in the world around us. It. Is. Difficult. To celebrate someone’s life rather than mourn their death. It is a process. It grows from within those who have lost, when we feel compelled to share the gift that this person has brought us through their life. It grows from joy. Sadness and happiness are fleeting emotions. Joy is a way of living. Joy is sharing what is good in our lives with those around us. Joy is what draws us together in community, and that shared joy is what we miss when someone has passed on. They bring light to our lives and they help us shine in ways we could not on our own.
I initially planned to talk about autumn and leaves changing being a beautiful process when it’s really the death of the tree for the winter with re-birth in the spring… But that’s been done. And frankly with the weather we’ve been having and the potential dampness looming this weekend, I’m not sure leaves falling are what’s most concerning. Life and death surround us, they shape us, they carve away our weakness and leave us with what makes us strong. And our relatives, our friends, our family, our neighbours, our teachers, our community that have passed before us have stoked the fires of our inner strength. And that light is something we have to share.
“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.” Grammy was a rock. She helped me shine. And I wanted to share some of that with all of you. And as we say this mass, in remembrance of all those who have passed before us, I would like to know some of the people that have touched your lives, that have illuminated you from within. So maybe, at dinner, we can share a little piece of our rocks with each other. And if anyone wants to play some tic-tac-toe… I’m game.
