GREENSBORO – Grief is a funny thing. You just never know when it will pop up, taking over your day and your mood. It can be broody and sad; it can be violent and enraging. Honestly, there is also some relief in there.
Mostly it is just, for me, an emptiness.
I lost my dad in June after a long decline due to a heart disease. I was lucky to have my dad around for so long. He was 91 when he died. He and my mom would have celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in July.
Losing my dad has been hard in and of itself. As one friend noted, no one loves you the same way as a parent.
It has also made me reflective about other losses. The other day I found myself making a list of all the people I’ve loved and lost, and the list is getting long. Writing their names was both healing and hard. Thinking about all this now, I have a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, even as I feel this cloud of ancestors swirling through me.
In 2017 my spouse and I went to Switzerland where I had lived as an exchange student my senior year in high school. My host family there consisted of Kurt and Rosemary Täschler (“mami” and “papi”) and my three sisters, Barbara, Susu and Kathi. I’ve kept in touch with my Swiss family, but I had already lost Rosemary, then Kurt, and then Kathi. Now Barbara was fighting cancer, and she too would die just a few years later. At this point it is just Susu and me, an honorary sister.
In Switzerland you can rent a grave for 25 years, then your time is up and any remains go to an ossuary. The grave marker is returned to the family. I’m not sure what people do with those when they receive them. This is a strange notion for many of us in the U.S. who are accustomed to the idea of an eternal resting place, but in this season of grief I’m feeling like it is a helpful time-frame. When Rosemary’s time was up, I was at first a bit unsettled but then it felt somehow freeing, like she became part of everything. Since none of us can see beyond death’s horizon, I can only imagine there is some way in which we return to the All.
My niece Sylvie who has an intractable form of epilepsy and has developmental limitations that make her both childlike and the most loving person I know, said to me “I’m sorry you lost your father. He is in your heart.” She tapped on my heart to show me where my dad is now. Thanks Sylvie, that is so true of all those we love and lose.
May our hearts be strong even as they are broken and stitched back together in loss and in love.
Reverend Sarah Lammert
Reverend Sarah Lammert is the founder of Shared Vision Consulting in Vermont and works as the Federal Chaplaincies Endorser for the Unitarian Universalist Association.
