2 posts tagged “memorial”

It's about freaking time!  Now military veterans of the Pagan and/or Wiccan persuasion can have pentacles inscribed on government-issued memorial markers for their graves.

The other day, Jordan (my 14-year-old) asked me if we could do something special on the 23rd.  It took me a few moments to figure out what she was asking, and as soon as I did, I felt like a pretty awful mom for not realizing immediately.  It's the date my late husband disappeared, and the date the medical examiner put on his death certificate after his remains were found.  When he vanished, Jordan was only 4 months old, and Steve was the only father my older daughter (then 4 years old) knew, since her biological father chose not to have visitiation with her after our divorce.  I had known at the time that Steve was not well, to say the least — four years of active alcoholism and untreated bipolar disease almost certainly provoked his decision to take his own life.  I can say with conviction that I did everything I could think of (as a naive girl in her early 20's) to help him, but the simple truth is that you can’t help those who refuse to help themselves; suicide is the ultimate disregard (and, in my opinion, the ultimate cruelty) of those who are willing to help.  And because he chose to do it in a remote wilderness, we didn’t know for sure what happened to him until over 3 years later.  Steve’s remains were discovered in March of 1996, by power company workers checking for fallen trees in the mountains after a bad windstorm. The medical examiner confirmed he’d shot himself.

I've never lied to my girls about what happened, despite relatives who harshly criticized me for not telling them he died in a car crash (or something else that would avoid the dread specter of suicide).  I was lied to enough as a child -- mostly by my own parents -- to utterly loathe & despise the practice of lying, especially to loved ones.  I've always believed that if a child is old enough to ask a question, they deserve an age-appropriate answer.  When my girls were very small, I told them that sometimes people have illnesses (which are not contagious!) that make them believe life is no longer worth living and so those people try to end their own lives.  As they got older, I introduced the concepts of drug & alcohol addiction and mental illness as factors in Steve's death.  Last year when Jordan was 13, I was going through a bunch of papers I'd tucked away, and I came across several of Steve's poems (in his own handwriting).  I gave them to Jordan, explaining that I'd been saving them for when she was old enough to start to understand.  It meant a lot to her, I could tell, and we talked (and cried a bit) for quite a long time that evening.

Since I honored Steve's request that he be cremated and his remains sent to his best friend of 30 years (to be scattered in a place that was sacred to the two of them in New Mexico), there is no gravesite for Jordan to visit.  Neither is there any kind of memorial site, and as I believe that death is more of a transition than anything (every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end), I've not marked the date with any kind of annual ritual or remembrance.  But Jordan needs that now, and I'm trying to figure out how to give that to her.

My current inclination is to take advantage of one of the local permanent labyrinth sites...walking a labyrinth can be quite profound, and possibly even healing.  (I've always been intensely drawn to labyrinth designs, although my favorite is the Chartres labyrinth.  A few years ago, my beloved Geoffrey got me this wonderful table-top labyrinth, and I keep it on my bedside table.)  I'm hoping to be able to give Jordan a way to connect with what was good about her father, and grieve with some sort of serenity (though I know her grieving will be for a concept more than for the actual person), and hopefully provide the beginning of a tradition -- whether she chooses the same remembrance act for her father each year, or different explorations of remembrance.  Good gods, sometimes it's phenomenally difficult to know what is best to do for your child.

Any suggestions as to other, Pagan-friendly, remembrance acts are welcome.