Today is All Souls day… a day for remembering all of those who have gone before us, to pray for their souls, to support them in their afterlife so that they might one day attain Heaven.

For me, having been raised in a more secular household, this is a new idea and concept. Of all the Catholic things I’ve have embraced since my conversion, this one has been truly one of the harder cultural practices to embrace. I’ve known many who have passed on. There have been times in my life where I felt I could mark the passing of the years by who has died and time time in between:

• My only known grandparents – I am 8-months in the womb – to be born a month later on All Hallows Eve (Halloween), people I have spent my life trying to understand in order to find my own roots in a world that sometimes seems far, far too big;
• My best friend, I am 11, she has died of a brain tumor that she has suffered with for many years – she gives me my first understanding of an afterlife when she visits me late one night – reassuring me that she is okay and safe and all is well;
• My biological father, I am 15, though I didn’t know of his passing until later in life and I struggle still to understand my own mixed feelings towards a man who caused so much harm but still reached out for connection when his own imminent death became known, I believe he found his way to God in his final years, but my own heart will forever be conflicted…
• my adoptive grandfather, I am 16 and returning from China and preparing for my first audition for a symphony – I play Taps, solo, on my violin at his funeral… the only grandfather I have ever known – he stood in line throughout the night to buy me the first cabbage patch doll, he hated gophers and moles with a passion I’m only now coming to appreciate, his hands were twisted and bent and gnarled and incredibly gentle and clever;
• my adoptive grandmother, I am 18 and suffering from a bad infection from having my wisdom teeth removed, and I lost all semblance of grace or control the night of her funeral when I realized she still had all of her trinkets stored in the little jewellery box I bought her for Christmas when I was 8 years old… I keep it still with her bits of pretty things inside… she was the only grandmother I have ever known, and I fondly remember so many things – fighting my mother over eating her Thanksgiving dinners, washing dishes in her small home, stuffing myself sick on plums from her tree, waiting patiently for permission to have a candy from her candy dish, studying her organ in the entry way, the feel of thick brown plush carpet, framed stiff pictures of relatives that were not mine;
• My Obaachan, I am 41 and my marriage is about to implode… my Japanese grandmother who would wait to eat until everyone else was filled and then would carefully eat every grain of rice that we might have missed as her meal, who survived WWII and still lived to embrace a silly blonde American girl who would belt out Simon and Garfunkel and cry over boys and had never truly known a day of want in her life.

There are more… so many, many more.

I don’t know where any of them are buried. I have never been to their graves, apart from their burials – and only a few of those.

This is where I start to feel very, very, lost. Catholics (and many other faiths) don’t just periodically pull out a photo album and stab a finger at the face of a long dead so-and-so and regale you with a tale of something that individual did that was funny, or laugh worthy, or something to mock. They go to their graves and there they visit with old relatives, they savour their memories, they keep house and maintain the premises, they check in on the neighbourhood around their loved ones and visit with known friends as well, if the opportunity arises.

Today, they bless the graves. They take their time. They cherish. Remember. Love. Celebrate. Pray.

In my family, we have never – not once – done any of these things.

In Japan, they visit their relatives and leave food on their graves; they maintain them; they go to shrines and pray…

But, I learned today of Kodokushi (孤独死) or lonely death. It is a Japanese phenomenon of people dying alone and remaining undiscovered for a long period of time.

Imagine being elderly and frail, you live surrounded by people, but no one really knows you any more. You wake day after day and eat your small portion of rice or perhaps you can meander down to visit at a public eatery and have a proper meal. You get sick. No one comes. No one helps you remember. No one cherishes you.

You lay down upon your bed and just…go. And it’s weeks or months before the neighbours complain about the smell or someone realizes you haven’t paid your rent. And all that remains of your life is a stained mattress. No family. No friends. No one noticed your departure.

……

There was a time in my life when I was ready to … go. To disappear myself. To walk as long as I could as deeply as I could into the mountains I so love until I simply became a part of those mossy hills. I thought, of all the ways to go – that seemed pretty okay. My body would feed and nourish the trees and wildlife. It would be simpler for my (now former) husband to get rid of the person he so despised, who could never keep him happy, who never lived up, who over spent and wasn’t attractive enough.

My children kept me anchored during this period of darkness. I remember a particularly bad night, sitting in my car at the top of a hill, just sitting there in a quiet part of town with no traffic…studying the darkened hillsides. Wondering and thinking for a very long time.

God showed me the faces of my boys.

I returned home. And lived.

I have never felt that pull in the same strong way since leaving my ex husband. But I think every person who has survived that particular call can attest to the permanent darkness that seems to attach itself to you. Much like a shadow, I am healthiest and the darkness is smallest when I stand in the full light of our Lord, confident of His love for me; if I begin to self-doubt or feel unwelcomed or somehow unwanted, that darkness starts to grow. It’s a kind of self-reinforcing loop and it can be hard to break free of that spiral. Time in prayer, time in the chapel, time with someone who truly loves you helps completely. Time laughing. Time making music. Time breathing. Time listening. Time looking and admiring the beauty of His creations…all help.

Sometimes that darkness is like a bruise that just exists over my heart.

But then my son will look at me and grin his goofy crooked grin and give me a hug and call me Momma and ask for my help, and all is well. Or my other son will come downstairs with his ever-present sarcastic snark and make a comment that just begs you to jump in and engage and get him into the giggles, and things are well.

I wonder sometimes at what my future will hold. Will my boys someday forget all that I have given to protect them and raise them to be men? Will I be alone in my elderly years? Poverty is a given at this stage of my life, so perhaps I will end up choosing to simply walk among the cedars until I can walk no farther. Will anyone notice? Or is Kodokushi part of my future as well? As a single mother with limited resources, I know I will give all that I have and more to see my children grow strong and grow beyond me. I pray to someday hold and love a grandchild. I pray that someday there will be a friend with whom I can laugh together with at our old creaky bodies falling apart and admire the beautiful sunsets and sunrises with, that I can marvel at the moon and the stars with. Someone who is okay with my sometimes dark shadow, but who will pray for me nonetheless when it’s my turn to return to God.

I pray for you, my sisters. We are, all of us, in need of a world who sees us. Who is not afraid to look at us and welcome our stories and our wounds and, even if they don’t fully grasp what we have survived, they still want us to hold their babies, to laugh with them, to share in the future as a full participating member of the community. I know my church is learning these things, and culturally it’s a challenging shift. Just as it is hard for me to go to the graves of my loved ones; its hard for the living to openly look and see the faces of those who desperately needed and need help and acceptance now…while here and alive and present.

I pray for those whose eyes must be opened.

I pray for those who need to be seen.

I pray for our children.

I pray for God to have mercy on us all.