Where Are They Now?
A Sermon for All Souls Day
Jan K. Nielsen
Wherever life has taken you this week,
whatever life has asked of you,
I hope that you’ve taken the time
to look up and around
and to notice the trees.
Some stand tall and bare,
yet “(e)ven empty,”
the poet, Mary Oliver, tells us,
“they are a good place to look,
to put the heart at rest.”
Others hold onto some of their autumn glory,
those leaves of crimson, amber and gold,
“all those leaves breathing the air” says the poet,
“so peaceful and diligent, and certainly
ready to be
the resting place (of angels, she says),
strange, winged creatures
that we, in this world, have loved.”
All of us, in this life, will lose someone we love.
None of us can live free of grief and loss.
So taught the Buddha to the grieving mother
who went door to door
unable to find any home untouched by loss.
Both to love and then, when a beloved dies, to grieve,
are part of what it means to be human.
We are in the season of All Souls,
that time when we,
like generations of humankind gone before us,
remember and honor our dead.
“I have lost,”
writes Mary Oliver,
“as you and
others have possibly lost a
beloved one,
and wonder, where are they now?” –
Where are they now,
our beloved ones?
Whether our beloved has been gone
from this world
for decades or only days,
we can yearn for their bodily presence –
to hear her laughter,
to see him run,
to touch again that hand.
It hurts that they aren’t here
to cheer at a grandchild’s ball game,
to offer a hug, or to look us straight in the eye and tell us,
“You’re doing the right thing.”
The death of someone we love
leaves a hole in our hearts that can never be filled.
Where are they now, our beloveds?
The longer we live
the more times life asks us to say good-bye
to someone who has died.
Like so many of you,
I have said good-bye to loved ones
more than a few times in my life.
I have known both the depths of grief
and the lingering sense of loss that can last a lifetime.
I have also learned that though their bodies live no more,
in a very real way, my beloveds are with me still.
This is another of those sermons
when I invite your minds to wander
as you look out these windows
at the birch trees
in our memorial garden.
As I share pieces of my story,
I hope you’ll let my voice
drift in and out of your mind,
as you enter your own story
and go wherever your heart leads.
Take some time right now
to remember loved ones you have lost.
See their faces.
Hear again their voices calling your name.
Feel the touch of their hands on your shoulder.
Who is with you still?
“How they do live on,” writes Frederick Buechner,
(our beloveds).
. . . (I)t is beyond a doubt (he says)
that they live still in us.”
Through decades of living with loss,
I have learned that Frederick Buechner is right.
Our relationships
with our loved ones do not end with their deaths.
It’s been more than two decades now
since my mother died.
In the years since her death,
I have come to understand her more deeply
than I could have all those years ago when she died,
when she was in her 50s and I in my 20s.
The more I grow to understand my mother,
the more I understand myself.
Who is with you still?
Remembering our loved ones
is not all sadness and seriousness.
Sometimes my mother makes me laugh, still.
I can be out bargain hunting with our teenage daughters
and see shoes that are zany and funky –
decidedly off- beat.
I say to the girls,
“Your Grandma Marge would love these!”
and I laugh.
I explain once again to the granddaughters she never saw
that their grandmother’s taste in shoes
was both wild and young.
She sometimes bought things even I wouldn’t wear.
I remember some rainbow colored knitted boots
that I quietly hauled to the re-sale shop after one Christmas
and never wore.
I thought they were hideous back then; I wish I had them now.
Who makes you laugh, still?
Who is with you, still?
Whose values shaped your own?
Whose example guided your life choices?
I think again of my mother.
I’ve spoken before
about her love for airplanes and the open sky,
but I don’t think I’ve ever told the story
of the time she decided it was time to go back to school.
Though she had completed her pilot’s training
almost a decade before,
she had never finished high school.
The December after I had just turned twelve,
my then forty-something father had a heart attack.
Not long after he was home from the hospital
my mother started going to classes at night, at age 40,
with two young children at home.
I remember her books spread out on the dining room table,
her fascination as she read for herself
the words of the Bill of Rights and,
when she had earned her GED,
the pride that shone from her face.
She went on to take courses at the local community college --
creative writing and journalism were her loves;
nursing, something practical,
that would lead to a paycheck of her own.
Looking back, I see now that my mother’s return to school
was not completely by her own choice, or on her own schedule.
My father’s heart attack pushed her to return to school,
at a time that must have seemed like the worst.
My mother’s worries and fears, though,
may have opened up
her long-held dream of getting an education.
Maybe that’s how it is for a lot of us in this life.
There may be open doors all around us
but sometimes we won’t walk through the threshold
until life gives us a nudge, or a push, or sometimes, a shove.
At twelve, I kind of took it for granted
that mom went back to school.
It seemed pretty basic to me and, in a way, for her, it was.
This was, after all, the woman who loved books,
served as the news reporter for the women pilots’ magazine,
and made sure I got to preschool and kindergarten
and always had a book of my own to read.
Though she didn’t have the privilege
of an education,
she had always valued words and learning.
Now, I look back and see
the strength, determination and courage
it must have taken for her to go back to school when she did.
I look back now and also see
how her love for learning passed to me,
and carried me again and again into the classroom,
even to return to school again in my 30s.
Now, as her first grandchild prepares to leave for college,
I see that my mother’s love for learning lives on in her grandchildren.
Whose values do you carry?
Whose story, maybe without your even realizing it,
has guided your life?
Whose memory gives you strength?
Who is with you, still?
So often it is the words of the poets
that give voice to what we struggle to put into words
but know in our bones.
I have known for years now
that my mother remains with me still,
not in some “make-believe,” supernatural sort of way,
and not only in my memories,
as important as memories are,
but in a way that is both spiritual and real.
I have sensed her presence
on airplanes and in cars,
near lakeshore and seaside,
and while looking out at the tops of the trees.
Some of you, too,
have shared with me
that you have sensed the presence
of someone who walks among us no longer.
“Why?” we wonder. “How can that be?”
Remember words from the poet, Rosie King,
as she tells the story of a family saying a final good-bye:
“One grandchild, tall as her mother,
stands on the steps holding lilies,
her own face
wet with rain,
her own way of looking
into the night: free ...
you're free now,
she murmurs;
lightly, in the marrow,
she carries you.”
We carry our beloveds, the poet teaches, in our marrow.
Marrow, of course, is that life-giving food in our bones,
where our bodies make the new cells that sustain life.
In a very real sense,
we carry the essence of our ancestors
in the marrow of our bones, and that is no small thing.
Marrow, though, also can have spiritual meanings,
and we can carry in our marrow
not just someone who was close in blood,
but also someone who was close in heart.
The word “marrow” can mean:
“inmost” or “essential part,”
“strength” or “vitality,”
“that which nourishes and sustains.”
We carry our beloveds lightly, in our marrow, says the poet,
in our inmost, essential places,
those places where, when life gets hard,
we can draw strength and find soul-lifting, life-giving vitality.
When I have known challenges in my own life
and wondered sometimes whether
I should just give up and turn back,
I could think of my mother and almost hear her whisper,
“Keep on. Keep on,” and feel a strength
I didn’t know I had course through my bones.
Who do you carry in your marrow?
Even though they may be gone from this world,
do you carry in your marrow a friend, an uncle, a life partner?
A mother? A father? A teacher?
Do you carry in your marrow a grandparent, a son, a daughter?
In the silence of your heart, speak their names.
Thank them for the gifts they continue to give.
Forgive them their imperfections.
Ask forgiveness for your own mistakes and missteps.
Tell them of your love for them.
Let their love again flow into your marrow.
Let their love rest in your bones.
Let their love give strength to your soul.
The Universalist Church
West Hartford, Connecticut
November 1, 2009