#4 Mourning Rituals: Release

The knowing loss is one thing. But it requires more than that. It requires flame, cutting, marking, sailing away. It requires actions. It requires a line; a line between life and death, between marriage and divorce, between before and after. It requires a line of demarcation.

In the Jewish tradition, people often leave stones at a grave site. It originated in the idea of ghosts and the need to weigh down the grave so that the soul cannot escape in the world. Stones are markers for me. I despise cairns built by hikers and day trippers to announce “I was here!” disturbing the natural order of the world, but I collect stones to remember, “I was there”, it happened. Stones are also used to weigh down the dead buried at sea, ballast sewn into the cotton burial shroud. Stones are needed to complete the act of grieving, to leave something behind, and ensure that it stays behind.

Torma is a food offering in Tibetan Buddhism. It can be offered to the very thing that causes the suffering, because suffering provides us opportunities to inch closer to enlightenment. Rather than running away from the suffering, suffering is embraced as an opportunity, a gift.

Wrapping, enclosing, containing, dead bodies, gifts. How do we mark a separation between what is and what will be? How do we contain something so it can be left behind? How can we be grateful for the gifts of loss?