JUNE 30
He could feel a hand on his shoulder. “All right,” he said
softly. “All right.” He stood at his walker. He could sense
eyes staring at him. “Goodbye,” he said to the coffin. He
turned on his walker and moved away.
It was a day of sun—warm, bright, a soft wind from the
west. The earth was green. The sun felt good on his face and
hands.
—TERRY KAYThere is often a strange quietness attendant on the rituals
of dying, as though creation itself has stilled for this moment
of absolute truth.
We may play through our roles in what seems like a
daze—except it isn’t a daze but a filling of this role of the
bereaved. The rituals are old, but for us the experience is
new and painful and raw.
So it is well to have rituals and customs to guide us, ser-
vices to signify what has happened. Besides giving us some
context of faith in which to put our loss, rituals and customs
help us Know What to Do with all this energy of grief and
pain—a security to cling to when one’s inner world is in
turmoil.
And in the holy distillations of this moment, how we are
comforted by the blessing of warm sun, soft wind, the green
earth.
Sometimes the simplest moments hold the most profound truths.