Honoring the Departed

It has been a particularly brutal few months, with some eight people I knew fairly well going on to the Other World. Seems I hear about someone who died or who is seriously ill most every week. Makes sense as the price one pays for longevity— the people you know disappearing like an ongoing game of musical chairs and never knowing who’s next. 

 

I’ve been fortunate to have a life relatively sheltered from death. I believe the first person I knew who left was my grandmother when I was perhaps 8 years old and then my grandfather when I was 12. I never went to a funeral or memorial service until I was 28 or so, when a preschooler I taught had a tragic accident in a hot tub. There were a few big losses like my beloved Orff teacher Avon dying at a too-young 51, me 39 at the time. A suicide from one of my Men’s Group members when I turned 50. Then my parents and my wife’s parents and so on. You know the list. 

 

Some ten years ago, I decided to try to keep track of the people I knew personally who had passed on, partly for a little Day of the Dead project I devised for myself. I divided the list into family, friends, neighbors, people from the school where I worked for so long, people from the Orff world, old classmates from my high school and college. Between working at that school and teaching here, there and everywhere in the Orff world, I know a lot of people and these two lists were the longest of them all— some 65 from school and 55 from the Orff Community. Altogether, there are some 200 people on the list and every November, I read through it again and spend some time remembering them all. 

 

Does anybody else do this? Just curious. If indeed you believe the Ancestors are always with us and through our remembrance, we keep them at least somewhat alive, then it seems like a good idea. Just a thought to consider.

 

As you might guess, it’s not a list I’m happy to see grow, but of course, it will. Meanwhile, may we all take good care of ourselves as best we can.