Memorial Days

by Geraldine Brooks

“Grief is praise,” writes Martín Prechtel in his book The Smell of Rain on Dust, “because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”

In her essay “On Grief” Jennifer Senior quotes a therapist who likens the survivors of loss to passengers on a plane that has crashed into a mountaintop and must find their way down. All have broken bones; none can assist the others. Each will have to make it down alone.

It feels like a sacred site, most definitely one dedicated to Mother Earth. For both sides of the looming declivity are gently rounded, like labial folds, sheltering the mystery within. I feel called to do something ceremonial in this place: to praise the beauty of Gaia, to atone for our crimes against her creation, to make a mother’s prayer for safe keeping of my sons.

“Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless,” he said.