A few weeks ago, my children and I attend a funeral for a friend who’s husband passed away from a long battle with cancer. It was a sobering experience. I brought a dear friend of mine who has also experienced many significant losses in her life, and I asked her to write up a reflection about our time attending the funeral at the monastery. Below is her reflection.

Grief is Universal

Guest Blogpost written by NM Ramsey of Memory Eternal:

Bittersweet. This has become my favorite word in the past year. Something can be excruciating while at the same time absolutely beautiful. Life and death hold moments that are incredibly bittersweet. 

I recently had an epiphany while on a hill overlooking a funeral at a monastery. Grief is something that can be shared universally. Words do no not have to be spoken to understand the depth of someone’s loss.

I watched the children running around, climbing trees, softly laughing while a  packed room of grieving adults that spilled out the doors into the courtyard prayed around their reposed loved one. I was overcome with how life and death in the Orthodox Faith are so intertwined and how we mourn our loved ones while finding solace in their resurrection to come. We keep living while they rest.

I saw the pain flicker across the wife’s face as she looked at her husband finally at peace. Knowing this was going to be the last time she saw him here. 

She smiled through her tears when certain parts of the prayers spoke of the resurrection of Christ. Trampling down death by death. 

My heart squeezed for her. I knew this feeling. This aching in your heart. Being surrounded by loved ones and feeling so alone. How it bounces back and forth between anguish and joy that your loved one is no longer with you, but they’re not suffering anymore. 

Our Fathers in the Faith speak of how it is right and part of being human to weep and mourn our loved ones. Jesus even wept for his friend Lazarus. In the Orthodox faith there is time for us to do this, time to find closure, time to honor and pray for them, but then we must remember our promise from God and rejoice. 

When I lost my daughter I didn’t know how to grieve in the Faith being recently made a catechumen. 

What I do remember about her actual burial is how peaceful I felt in the devastation of the whole thing. 

Being surrounded by members of our Parish that were praying not only for us but with us. Covering her with dirt, laying her to rest. We were together. 

 I found over time how much Orthodoxy embraces death and remembering our dead often. We don’t run from it, we look it in the face and have no fear. 

When I have days where I miss my daughter and feel alone I call out to the Theotokos, knowing how she watched her son die in front of her, holding on to the belief in her very core he would rise again like he promised. I know I am never truly alone with her so near. She understands loss. 

Standing on that hill , the smell of incense carried by the breeze slowly made it’s way to me and I was reminded again how we are all connected. I didn’t know many people at the funeral and yet none of that mattered. I know how grief in our Faith is bittersweet. How we have hope in a life to come after this one where we will see our loved ones again, God willing. How we can pray to our loved ones, how they may not physically be here but never truly leave us. As I heard the sound of dirt being shoveled, and the chanters fading out,  I whispered Memory Eternal for the reposed and started back down the hill to the living. 

Written by NM Ramsay of Memory Eternal Stillbirth and Death Doula Services

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