All Saints' Day

I'm going to try to do a "weekend in photos" post later, and there are a couple people I have to thank for surprise presents they sent me, but first will come church and All Saints' Day.

Even though Disciples of Christ are typically not *terribly* liturgical (at least some congregations), this is one day that we do tend to mark.

And of course, this year, it's going to be hard.

All Saints' Day is of course the day we remember people who passed in the year before - saints being more in the early New Testament sense of "people who followed the faith but have died" rather than the more Catholic/Orthodox sense of "people who were specially holy and did particularly good things while they lived"

And yeah. This year All Saints' Day is....kinda big for me. (At my mom's church, they are doing a slide show of photographs of the people who passed; she had to take a photo of my dad down there so they could scan it). I made a point to wear something with pockets and I am going to grab a handkerchief and take it with me because I expect there will be tears.

I remember All Saints' Day 1989. My grandmother (my maternal grandmother, my last living grandparent) had died over the summer - in fact, a couple weeks before my parents and brother moved from Ohio to Illinois. We didn't really have time to mourn and now I marvel at how well my mother kept it together during that time. Or maybe the busy-ness of packing helped, I don't know.

I do know I didn't really mourn my grandmother. I was....shocked isn't the right word; it wasn't unexpected because my grandmother had been very unwell, she had severe osteoporosis (was essentially bedbound) and had an abdominal cancer and she had decided not to pursue treatment. So it was a matter of time. (Also, she was 92). But I was kind of numb; so much was happening that summer otherwise. We went to the "family time" (called up there "the viewing" and yeah, it was a viewing - no one warned me that was going to be open casket and I was not emotionally prepared. I also was not emotionally prepared for one of the more-distant relatives sort of throwing herself, sobbing, on the casket [later my mom told me "I should have warned you, you don't know her well but she is like that"]. I mostly lurked in the back of the room and cried and let other relatives hug me. The funeral was actually a relief because it was closed casket, and I also knew once it was over, it was OVER and we'd be able to go back home again.

So I didn't really mourn. But then, early November 1989, the congregation I belonged to (Memorial Christian Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I'm not sure they still exist; anyway, they don't use the old church building I knew when I was there any more). We had All Saints Day and they invited people to name people they'd lost in the previous year.....and I named my grandmother.

And that was it. That was when I started crying in the way I hadn't before. It took all that time.

So yeah.

And last year, of course, the thing that hung over the entire church on this day was Steve's absence, because he was such a big part of everything there. (And in a way: somehow it's easier when it's a shared grief. I expect this year will be hard for me because my grief is for a man a few of the people at this church met once, and others, not at all).

I think it's important to mark the day, still.

But I know this is going to be difficult.

About 3 weeks to my dad's memorial service and I know that's going to be hard. So far I have not been asked to read anything or say anything and I HOPE my mom, knowing how I hate having things sprung on me, is not waiting to ask me. I'm not sure what I'd say if it was, if, like, I got up there, and Sunday when we go down to the church to get things ready she'd be like "Oh, by the way, they want you to get up and share a short memory" and I don't know if I could refuse or not...I mean, I COULD, but would it be "politic" to refuse?

I hate to say it but I will be glad when this is all over, and I am back on the train coming home after Thanksgiving.


I also admit I sadly wonder, some 40-50 years in the future, will there still even be people to remember me the first year I'm gone? Will there even be a congregation that does All Saints' Day? Sometimes I think that a loss of ritual like that (or whatever equivalent different faiths have) makes us less human.


****

Added after church:

Yeah, that was HARD. I had scheduled myself to pray at the table and I didn't make it through without starting to cry. Everyone understood but I still hate that. I thought I'd be fine. I really did. The person filling the pulpit talked about the loss of his own dad and that kind of started to do it to me.

And then my stupid jerk brain. Somehow it got onto the question of "would your dad be proud of you" which morphed down two not-great paths:

1. "You'll never know for sure now"

and

2. "You sure haven't done anything this fall he could be proud of"

and dangit. And I know, I know, it's madness to take approval from others as your source of self-worth but that's one of the unfortunate legacies of being a smart kid whose peers were mean to her; I tend to look to "the adults" for proof that I'm OK. Even though I'm kind of "the adult" now.

And now this afternoon I must clean my kitchen (in preparation for the plumber coming in tomorrow to deal with the busted disposall) and go get the makings for the cheeseburger soup I will feed the college student ministry Tuesday afternoon and I have to decide if I'm up to making it today/if I can find time tomorrow in and around everything else and ugh, I am just tired.