Do you have a lead on any good mausoleum contractors? I’m not sure a normal graveyard could handle what needs buried! lol
Again, your words touch my aching disillusioned soul. As I’m reading your words, I can picture all the corpses I’ve propped up trying to preserve. Some have a frightening beauty to them—think preserved deceased monk resting in the position they died. While others are horrifyingly left on display—think love has won cult leader left to rot in bed.
The graveyard analogy is an excellent way of visualizing what we refuse to let go back to the dust from which it came. I have never lost a child, thankfully, but have friends who have. The moment of lowering the casket into the ground has always had the most emotions tied to burying a child, in my previous pastoral experience. We say things like, “I’m not ready to let them go,” “I can’t let them go,” or worse, thinking the child might come back if they gave isn’t sealed.
We seem to hold that same tight gripped love to the internal things that were taken or destroyed without our permission. It’s a challenge to look at that expectation, that relationship, or that ideal and think, it’s time to seal the tomb and say good bye, they are not coming back.
Thank you for helping me see, I am not doing a disservice to God, or his people, when realizing it’s time to seal some open graves, bury some corpses, and perhaps write the eulogy at a later date.
An old fiction trope uses the death/rebirth cycle. It was common in 20th century romantic comedies where boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again. Very old fashioned and narrowly tailored to cis-gender stereotypes. But the death in the middle act is that someone in the couple, or both people, recognize there’s something that has to go, that has to die, in order for there to be any chance of life in the relationship.
Art imitates life, or vice versa. There’s a lot I’ve had to let die over the decades. There’s a lot that’s come along in its place as well.
Do you have a lead on any good mausoleum contractors? I’m not sure a normal graveyard could handle what needs buried! lol
Again, your words touch my aching disillusioned soul. As I’m reading your words, I can picture all the corpses I’ve propped up trying to preserve. Some have a frightening beauty to them—think preserved deceased monk resting in the position they died. While others are horrifyingly left on display—think love has won cult leader left to rot in bed.
The graveyard analogy is an excellent way of visualizing what we refuse to let go back to the dust from which it came. I have never lost a child, thankfully, but have friends who have. The moment of lowering the casket into the ground has always had the most emotions tied to burying a child, in my previous pastoral experience. We say things like, “I’m not ready to let them go,” “I can’t let them go,” or worse, thinking the child might come back if they gave isn’t sealed.
We seem to hold that same tight gripped love to the internal things that were taken or destroyed without our permission. It’s a challenge to look at that expectation, that relationship, or that ideal and think, it’s time to seal the tomb and say good bye, they are not coming back.
Thank you for helping me see, I am not doing a disservice to God, or his people, when realizing it’s time to seal some open graves, bury some corpses, and perhaps write the eulogy at a later date.
Writing a eulogy in your journal might be a helpful exercise!
This is beautiful and needed—an idea I’m going to journal about right now. Thank you.
This is really interesting and useful.
An old fiction trope uses the death/rebirth cycle. It was common in 20th century romantic comedies where boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again. Very old fashioned and narrowly tailored to cis-gender stereotypes. But the death in the middle act is that someone in the couple, or both people, recognize there’s something that has to go, that has to die, in order for there to be any chance of life in the relationship.
Art imitates life, or vice versa. There’s a lot I’ve had to let die over the decades. There’s a lot that’s come along in its place as well.
Interesting!
I have quite a substantial graveyard for 2024 myself. Grateful for these words, Aimee.
Lore! Jeannie Prinsen mentioned The Understory this week in her 2024 reading list (https://open.substack.com/pub/jeannieprinsen/p/my-year-in-reading-2024-edition?r=1t5fhd&utm_medium=ios). Keep up the good work!
Thanks Lore.
Wow. This is beautiful.