We Remember Them
Treasuring memories (without letting them trap us in the past) is one way of coping with loss. We remember through kindness, legacy, and celebrating life.
Being a minister is a tremendous privilege. In adult education classes like “Credo” and “Path to Membership,” I am touched by the personal stories that people entrust to the group. Watching this community thrive makes my heart sing. When people ask me to stand with them during the major passages of their lives, I am deeply honored. Memorial services are some of those times.
Whether I am officiating at them or not, I find Unitarian Universalist memorial services to be poignant for friends, comforting for families, and strengthening for communities. Every service is unique, celebrating the life of one, irreplaceable person. We will honor the spiritual path of the person being remembered, but we don’t assume that all of the mourners believe the same thing about the purpose of humanity or the possibility of God. Inclusive memorial services are, I believe, one of the most beautiful gifts Unitarian Universalism has to offer the world. Instead of focusing on what divides us, memorial services bring us to awareness of the love we share. Very often, UU memorial services remind us of the ways our loved one had yearned to heal the world, and we are stirred to take up the work they left behind. We laugh again as we re-tell the person’s favorite jokes, we grieve our loss, and we draw closer together for the sake of the lives that remain.
Remembering is a strong theme in UU writings about grief. While we have diverse ideas about what happens after we die, we agree that the beloved dead live on in our hearts and memories. This is one aspect of the Humanist thread in the tapestry of our UU tradition. The practice of remembering isn’t just a mental exercise. A number of spiritual practices gather under this umbrella. Today I would like to talk about remembering through kindness, remembering through legacy, and remembering through the celebration of life.
Remembering Through Kindness
Acts of kindness are one way to invoke the memory of those we have lost. Communities have various ways of showing compassion to grieving families in their midst – preparing a reception after the service, sending cards, bringing casseroles to the family. These actions are a tangible, constructive expression of grief for the circle of mourners surrounding the immediate family. We remember the person who died by showing love for the people they loved most. Those aren’t simply casseroles; they are ripples from the positive impact that someone left behind.
Other acts of kindness follow the example of the person we hold in memory. We make memorial gifts to the charities they supported. We volunteer for the causes to which they devoted their time. When we face a decision about being compassionate, we stop to consider what that person would have done. During the period of mourning and long after, the beloved dead are with us still when we remember them with acts of kindness.
This sounds good in theory. The Humanist spiritual practice of caring for the living may be simple, but it’s not always easy. I remember one time in particular when I was slow to comfort a friend.
Whenever I see this friend and ask how he is feeling, he says something cheerful about the gift of another day. He’s very persuasive about it. His gratitude for each new day is contagious.
When my friend’s sister died, I didn’t know what to do. He continued to insist on his gratitude for life, although his speech was slower, his pitch more subdued. I thought about sending a card, but I hesitated. I didn’t know his sister. What would I say in the card? Maybe he was trying to put on a brave face, and I shouldn’t break his stride with a reminder of grief. Maybe small gestures didn’t matter.
I decided to go ahead and send the card, at least as much for my need to reach out as for what might be his need to be reached. Besides, I was raised to respond at times like this. My parents and grandparents would have sent condolences, so that’s what I did.
My friend sent out pre-printed thank-you notes. This was several years ago, but it made an impression on me. On the inside, the card said, “your kindness will long be remembered.” Of course. Small gestures do matter. When I have been in similar situations, the cards and the phone calls and the fruit baskets all mattered. They mattered even when I didn’t have the strength to acknowledge them, as my friend had done.
I realized that my hesitation had come out of my discomfort, not the excuses I was telling myself about giving him space. I think I was afraid of not being a good enough friend. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, and I was almost scared into saying nothing at all. When I’m someone’s minister, I’m less concerned about intruding when I contact a person in mourning. Figuring out how to be a good friend is harder.
Maybe this sense of discomfort isn’t a barrier for people in this room. Members of this congregation take pretty good care of each other. I do see the isolation at work in the larger society. Pain is assumed to be private. Fear of death or of awkwardness prevents people from completing the ancient casserole rituals. The same malaise keeps people from asking for help. I would hate to see that isolating fear creep into our community.
Out of respect for the people who came before us, people who set an example of compassion, and out of our Humanist emphasis on the preciousness of this life and this world, we remember those who have died through acts of kindness. The practice of caring is not unique to us, but it is urgent if we take Humanism seriously. This life is important. Human beings are important. The love we give matters. We must not allow fear to prevent us from giving or receiving kindness, because kindness is a form of memory.
Remembering Through Legacy
The ripples of love that people leave behind aren’t limited to simple acts of kindness, as important as those are. People may also leave legacies of institutions, resources, skills, and traditions. The way we receive and transform those legacies is another category in our spiritual practice of remembering.
There was an elder at a church where I was involved many years ago. I’ll call him Mr. Kent, because I always thought of him as kind of a hidden hero. Mr. Kent was a member of the finance committee. He was often around the church during the week, taking care of committee business or participating in any program he could sign up for that happened during the day.
He had traveled quite a bit in his younger years, and he liked to tell stories about the world as well as learn new things about other cultures. Mr. Kent had a big-picture view of history. I remember one discussion group where some frustrating turn of current events had come up. He said that, in his lifetime, he had seen our country in bigger messes, we had figured our way out of them before, and we would do it again.
Mr. Kent went over the church budget with me. Through his explanation, and through his actions at the church, I came to understand that caring for a community’s resources is a form of love. He put time and attention into record-keeping because that was his way of sustaining the institution that sustained him in other ways.
Mr. Kent died a few years ago. The legacy he left behind included a church with ship-shape finances, good stories, and an example of quiet volunteer service. Members of that church have kept up those traditions, set by Mr. Kent and by other elders. I still think of him fondly if I have an occasion to fill out a mileage reimbursement request.
Here in Fallston, we are well aware that we drink from wells we did not dig. Careful stewardship of the resources and wisdom that have been passed down to us is serious business. How do we live up to the legacies that we keep? Whenever possible, we give those legacies sustained life by adding our own resources, making them grow, and letting them change if they need to change in time. Legacies are resources for positive transformation, not relics trapped in amber.
Resources such as financial legacies are included in this category, but they aren’t the only ones. Think of a skill that someone taught you, someone who is gone from your sight. Have you practiced in order to grow that legacy? Have you taught that skill to someone else? The gifts we receive through the generations are best honored when we pass them along with interest.
Values like freedom are legacies as well. In the schools where I grew up, Black History Month was a big deal. Studying the lives of African-American scientists, scholars, and civil rights leaders, we got the sense that these were people who made history for a purpose. They opened up pathways for the benefit of future generations, which is to say, us and those who will come after us. I came to understand that my own enjoyment of peace and a higher quality of life was thanks, in part, to the great figures of Black history. America is a better place for all of us because of them, and all of us who receive that gift have a responsibility to see that the work of freedom continues.
In our Unitarian Universalist congregations, we might allow for the possibility of an afterlife or reincarnation, but we focus our attention on this life. In the Humanist sense, immortality means building something that will benefit others after we are gone. Build a movement, grow a network of students, practice stewardship of a worthy tradition. When someone we love has done that, we remember them by keeping and transforming that legacy.
Remembering Through Celebration of Life
One of the gifts of Humanism that has been passed down to us is a sense of awe at the world as it really is. Cultural understanding and scientific discovery aid our spiritual lives, because these are some of the things that make us go, “Wow. What an amazing universe.” Humanism teaches that our lives are precious and unrepeatable, so there is no time like the present to appreciate our surroundings. In honor of their insight, and in honor of the people who shared their joys with us before they died, we remember them in the celebration of life.
Personally, I celebrate dairy products in memory of my ancestors. I have mentioned that my mother grew up on a dairy farm, and that we visited there often when I was growing up. When I was about 12 years old, I was convinced that I was going to go into advertising someday. I wanted a job where I could be creative and also receive a steady paycheck. My grandmother picked up on this cue and campaigned for me to consider a career with the dairy council. For several years, she saved clippings from the farm magazines about advertising in the dairy industry so that I could see what an exciting field awaited my creative talents. She made a convincing case, such that I got in the habit of watching the milk commercials so that I could talk with her about them. I ended up doing public relations in the arts and education instead before I entered seminary, and she was OK with that. When I see a clever commercial for dairy products, I smile and think about how much she would have liked it.
From my mother, I celebrate cheese-based cooking. Both of my parents cooked. The recipes I remember most from my mother are one-dish meals. For instance, I remember when she taught me how to make macaroni and cheese from scratch. I was a teenager, and I hadn’t realized that macaroni and cheese could be made without the aid of a blue box. She had volunteered to make huge, tin foil deep dishes full of macaroni and cheese as part of our church’s participation in the interfaith soup kitchen. We used our largest pot to boil more macaroni than I had ever seen. We melted huge blocks of cheese into a sauce. Stirring it together required noticeable upper body strength. I kept the warm dishes steady in the car as she drove to the church to drop them off. Casseroles involving melted cheese make me think of comfort and generosity, two things I celebrate in my mother’s memory. I am so grateful that she encouraged me to think outside the box.
I am reminded of a poem by UU minister Mary Wellemeyer, “Pie With Spirits.” (The full text of the poem is contained in her book, Admire the Moon: Meditations, available from the UUA Bookstore.) She writes:
This is the very pumpkin pie
my grandmother made—almost.
(The poet continues)
This is my special shared moment
with her, departed a quarter century.
Wellemeyer writes about something that brings her joy, something well within reach on any given day. The memory of her grandmother comes along with that joy. This is the celebration of life I am talking about. Doing the things that make us glad to be alive honors the people who came before, the people who sustained us so that we could reach the present moment. If it’s an activity that we used to share with someone who has died, their presence in our hearts is lifted up with our delight.
What is something you remember sharing with a departed loved one? Whether it is walking in nature, shoe shopping, riding roller coasters, or making pie, let it be a celebration. When we live our lives fully and authentically, we remember them.
Conclusion
Humanist resources for grief ask us to focus on what matters most in this life. We treasure human relationships, and our capacity to care for one another. We value enduring gifts that each generation has an opportunity to grow. We value the experience of being alive, being inspired by the world as it is. All of these things that matter are ways to remember those who have gone before us. We remember them in compassion for the people they loved and in repeating the examples of kindness they showed us. We remember them through stewardship of the legacies they left behind, growing skills and wisdom and institutions until it is our turn to pass them along. We remember them in the celebration of life, finding joy in the fullness of being.
Let us remember.
So be it. Blessed be. Amen.
