Memorial Day 2019

For several years after Luke passed, I carried around the notion that if I were to grieve, I would be making an idol of his passing: letting something other than God dictate my emotions and responses. Of course, I’ve learned much since those years. Grief demands to be witnessed, in one way or another, and I’ve found instead that God makes our hearts to feel, that he came to sit with us in our grief, and that he is especially close to the broken-hearted. 

This last year, I’ve reflected and read often on grief, about the practice of lament, and about how different communities and cultures create (or don’t create) spaces to mourn - together or separately, publicly or privately. Some communities mourn for forty days together, for example. Some communities hold little space for this at all. 

In Our Greatest Gift, a meditation about caring for those who are dying, Henri Nouwen reminds us of this: that our traditions and practices around leaving this earth are just as important as the traditions and practices we hold around welcoming children here at birth.

We are a people present for it all - for the coming and the going and the living in-between. 

And so, I’ve been especially grateful for Memorial Day this year, for the only shared holiday in America for collective mourning and honoring and celebrating. I think we don’t quite know what to do with it all - and so we’ve turned this day into pool parties and grill-outs and summer welcoming. We have gotten a part of it right, I do know: that we were made to be together, in community. 

America’s past and present are messy - a history as equally riddled with injustice and cruelty as with beauty and integrity and valor. Yet, I don’t think this minimizes at all the sacredness of this day, the sacredness of the countless lives lost. Sacrifice is tender and rare and powerful - and I don’t want to forget too quickly. We usher in life; we wholly honor death. 

Today, I’m remembering, and honoring, and holding space for Memorial Day. I’m so grateful for the sacrifice of others who have carved out paths of freedom for those coming up behind. I am committing to continuing this work, to look at these greatest sacrifices and to not look away. To all whose lives have been lost, thank you. To all who carry the weight of these losses, thank you. May we continue to live lives of sacrifice and honor as we shape our communities and nation for generations beyond.

pc: @carli_rude