Honoring Our Dead in a New Age
How our changing rituals allow space for honest emotion
As I recently sat in a memorial service for a friend who died from a heroin overdose, I realized that each word from the speakers had meaning and value. The church was sparsely filled. The service organic, raw, and charged with honesty and vulnerability. I truly believe this experience would have been vastly different two years ago.
I wrote my first piece about Covid-time funerals after the death of my uncle in the early part of 2021. So much has changed during lockdown, but our time-honored ceremonies have undergone a particular kind of reset — a fundamental altering of the expectations we bring to the rituals of our losses.
The change has quietly shifted the undercurrent of our grieving process and, in doing so, causes us to redefine what truly matters. In light of those changes, how do we honor the dead and provide space for the living to process transitions? When it comes to our traditions, what should we keep and what should we discard?
Brutal honesty is heart-balm to the grieving
Having time to do some thinking this past year made me acutely aware of my ego’s battle with my id. I realized that I spent so much energy on obligations that I undertook because of…
