10/31/2018 1 Comment "How lucky i am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."- Winnie the Pooh There was a point in my childhood when I got really irrationally worried about death. Not about my death, somehow that has never really concerned me, but about the death of my parents, and my sisters, and my other family. I can remember lying in bed awake at night and my heart would start pounding and I would feel so panicked I couldn't breathe, all at the thought of someone I loved dying.
Needless to say, I tackled this fear in much the same way I tackled most of my fears and anxieties as a child, I buried myself in books and in my imagination. In short, I wasn't dealing directly with it at all. However, there is an awful lot of death in children's books; in Harry Potter (my favorite series of books both growing up and as an adult) there are at least a dozen deaths of characters you've come to love. There's death in The Redwall books by Brian Jacques, death in Lord of the Rings, death in Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller; I could go on, but the truth is there are few books I remember reading at that time in my life that didn't feature character death. Strange as it may sound, I mourned those characters as a child. I wept for their death, felt the ache of loss, but I learned how to move on. The anxiety about people whom I loved dying essentially ceased. In spite of this, when my Great Aunt Joan, with whom I was very close, passed away I didn't handle it very well. I mourned her death for a really long time and there wasn't much that seemed to ease the burden of mourning. There were a couple of things that did help, though. My Aunt Joan was very wise, and one thing she told me when I was young was if there was someone I didn't like, I should pray for them, not that God would change them, but that I could see who it was God had created them to be (and thus love them, too). Whenever I did that, I would think of my aunt Joan and I would hear her voice in my ear and I'd start to pray. It reminded me of her, of the way she lived her life, the person she was and I felt better knowing that a piece of who she was, was still alive and present in this world because of me. Secondly, the church I grew up in had the custom of inviting people to say the names of their loved ones out loud when we were praying the prayers of the faithful. I was surprised one week, months after her death, when I heard a voice say, "Joan Coyle." One of the girls I went to school with said my aunt's name during the prayers of the faithful and that really touched me. This girl, who I wasn't even really friends with, remembered her name and felt it was important to pray for her. It meant a lot to me then, even if I didn't quite understand why. I would learn much later that the church has theology surrounding both of those things. In praying and in emulating my aunt Joan, I was experiencing what it feels like to be part of the Communion of Saints. In essence, we believe that all of the faithful, whether on earth, in purgatory, or in heaven are united through the Eucharist. It was, as Sirius Black suggests in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, that "the ones who love us never truly leave us." The church teaches that offering Mass is the most powerful way to pray for a person's soul, and while that Mass wasn't specifically offered for her, there was a moment in which the entire community was praying for her. Again, in this, I was experiencing what it means to be part of the communion of Saints, part of the Body of Christ. Through prayer, through Mass, and through the communion of Saints, I am able to echo the sentiments of Tolkien in The Return of the King when he writes, "His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom." In this month of November, when we are asked in a particular way to remember and pray for our loved ones who have died, I pray that you too may find comfort in the Communion of the Saints, in our community's prayer, and in the wisdom that's been hard earned through grief. I invite you to find time to pray with your family this month for your loved ones who have died, to offer one another comfort, and to pray for our loved ones that we may see them again in heaven. Peace, Michaela
1 Comment
Michele Swarthout
11/3/2018 05:34:19 am
This is my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased! God is working through you every day and I feel so joyful that you are following him so closely!
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