REsources for Living
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One way of defining religion might be as a place for talking about things that are hard to talk about. What does my life mean? Who or what is in charge? Where did everything come from? What do I owe to other people? What is good enough? How am I connected to the other beings of the planet as well as the other people? Why do bad things happen?
None of these questions is easy to talk about, because none of them have a single right answer that you can learn and have ready for all time. But one of the hardest things to talk about is What happens when we die? For starters, the answer is that we don’t know. Maybe our matter and our energy (which are really the same thing) merge back into the universe without leaving anything personal behind. Maybe we have spirits that are reincarnated for another go-round at life, or that meet up with the spirits of loved ones who have died, or move on to another universe.
We really have no way of knowing.
So maybe it’s just best to put your faith in the version you prefer, since a) there’s nothing wrong with taking comfort where you find it, and b) who’s to say that what happens after we die isn’t decided by what we believed while we were alive?
It’s hard to talk about what might happen when we die (the hardest part being that dying is a matter of when, not if). But it can be harder still to talk about what happens when people who we love die. After all, by the time we face our own death, there really won’t be much we can do about it. But the sad fact is that at some point people and animals we deeply care about will almost certainly die, and we have to figure out how to respond. And that is hard and painful for anyone—and especially hard and painful if you’re a child, or if you’re a parent who has to try to explain things to a child.
Some religions hand out answers that are designed to help ease the pain: He’s gone to be with Jesus… She’s in a better place… God called him home… And you can certainly be Unitarian Universalist and believe in those answers. But our religion is not going to give them to you as something that we’re sure of. So what do we do, what do we say, especially to children, when someone we love is dying or has died? I don’t, of course, have all the answers. But I have some suggestions.
- Remembering may hurt, but it also helps. When someone we love dies, what we get to keep, in addition to the love, are our memories. And those memories stay brighter and fresher in our mind when we tell the stories. Then other people can have those treasured memories, too. When I found out a couple of years ago that my beloved dog Coretta was dying of cancer, I decided that every day she had left I was going to share one good thing about her on Facebook. I called it 100 Good Things About Coretta, although I only got to 29 before she died. I still go back and read those memory postings, and yes, I still cry, but that isn’t a bad thing. Tell the stories. Even tell the stories that aren’t so good.
- It isn’t always going to hurt this way. Losing someone hurts differently at different times, and that’s OK. You might feel like laughing and playing a day or two after someone has died, or you may break down sobbing years later. There is nothing wrong with either. But generally, the pain of losing someone is like the half-life of radioactive material. After a certain period of time it’s half as bad as it was. And then it becomes half of that. And so on. The pain never completely goes away, but you should trust that with time it will feel better.
- Rituals are there for a reason. Different religions have different ways of handling death, but none suggests that you should just shrug your shoulders and get on with life. You might want to have a memorial service for a beloved pet, or keep a lit candle by the picture of a departed grandmother or have a picnic on the grave of an ancestor or wear black clothes to show you’re in mourning or create an altar with a few of someone’s favorite belongings or chose any number of other things that help you to give shape in the visible world to the feelings that you have inside.
- Love doesn’t die. Love is like a candle that lights the flame of another candle. And that candle goes on to light a bunch more flames that go on to light still more. So even if the first candle goes out, the flame is still going. When someone we love dies, we keep the love. And our job is to keep handing on that love, lighting more flames that will keep carrying on.
It isn’t easy to talk about death, and it’s even harder to handle the death of someone you love. But talking helps. Sharing the love helps. Remembering helps. Taking time to grieve helps. Rituals of mourning help. And just being open with people of all ages to the reality that life and death, joy and sorrow, are all tied up together in this world of ours can help us to hold one another up in times of grief and mourning.
- REsources for Living - December 1, 2020
- A Fond Goodbye - December 1, 2020
- REsources for Living - November 1, 2020
