Anyone who knew my Dad knows he loved to celebrate. Anything and everything. Each holiday, he would come home with a little gift for me, my sisters, and my Mom. He loved any and all occasions to love on his people a little extra. Birthdays in particular were his favorite. It was pretty amazing to have this kind of excitement and attention—my Dad was my own personal birthday hype man.
So for many years after my Dad’s death I really struggled with my birthday. It was a day that reminded me so much of him and how much he loved and celebrated me. Even as a teen, it was no longer a day of excitement, but now a day of mourning, of absence. Something that is especially difficult for me about losing someone I love is feeling distant from them. And that my Dad, someone who I loved the most, could know so little about me and less with each passing year. Each birthday felt like it marked another year added to our separation from each other.
A ritual began out of desperation.
I can’t remember when it started, but each year on my birthday I would write him a letter in my journal. I would write to him as if he were just far away and I hadn't seen him in a while. Tell him what was going on in my life, what happened the past year. My attempt at staying in touch. One of my ways of speaking to the Dead.
Sometimes I can barely believe that it’s been 23 years since he died (!)—some days I can fondly and calmly recall his memory, whereas other days, I'm a mess. I fall apart. Recently, I have felt fragile when thinking of him and his death. I am currently the age he was when he passed and I am sitting in that reality more. Grief is funny like that. It doesn’t ever go away, and sometimes, at seemingly random and inopportune moments, it expands and compounds.
I recently read a wonderful essay by Ross Gay on Grief from his collection Inciting Joy, that sums up this sentiment nicely,
And the griever teaches us, or reminds us, there is no pulling it together. There are only degrees or expressions of falling apart. Because grieving, alert to connection, luminous with it, is never only one person’s experience. In fact, I think it is the case that grieving, or the griever, consciously or not, connects to all grief, and to all grievers, and which is perhaps why there are some traditions in which the griever is held in constant vigil for a long time—those traditions understand the griever is entering oceanic sorrow, is drifting into it. And those traditions know, connected as we are, we are obligated to keep an eye on each other as the waters of grief close behind us.
And so we must hold each other, not only when the grief begins, but when we again and often return to that oceanic sorrow, because once we’ve dipped our toes into it initially, it will always be there. My work in Rituals of Remembering is an attempt to hold this kind of space in a society where (at least in my experience as a griever) we do not have many occasions to address the ongoing and lasting process of grief and celebration of our lost loved ones.
At the next Rituals of Remembering, happening this Saturday August 24th, we will come together to talk about how we speak to the dead, how we stay in touch with our loved ones who are no longer accessible to us in the same way. My birthday is coming up on the 29th, so I am looking forward to writing letters together with all who attend that day for my birthday ritual.
Our last gathering was really special, and if you’d like the opportunity to join together to grieve we will be here with open arms.
Let’s visit the ocean together.
In grief and gratitude,
A
Rituals of Remembering is a discussion and creative activity-based workshop series that aims to provide a space and structure for participants to open and deepen our experience of grief, loss, and remembering beyond the death of those we love, using the garden space as the central theme. Each month will focus on a particular theme and related activity and invite participants to discuss rituals of remembering together in a group setting. Each activity will also give opportunities to incorporate remembering directly into the garden space, so that community members may return to remember in the garden beyond the workshop series. Events can be attended individually or as a 4-part series. Kids welcome with age-appropriate programming by my wonderful sister, Gaby Martinez.
Presented in partnership with Mothers on a Mission 28, Moms Demand Action Oak Park, and NeighborSpace.
Please share this link —bit.ly/RitualsOfRememberingAug24— especially to those based on Chicago's West Side. If you'd like to attend please register. Though this series prioritizes our neighbors in Austin and the surrounding area, all are welcome.
Next events in this series are:
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