Temple of Memory

 

Words, when carefully attended to, can cause important shifts in perspective. Often when grieving we feel overwhelmed by our memories, with the implication that the memories hold us in our grief. But — 

"Without memory we would be unable to be healed from past painful events.”

Sr. Phil O’Shea

In the meditation she led today, she quoted from John O’Donohue in his book, Anam Cara, on the idea of the “temple of memory.” We might reflect on the temple of memory, and further, of “no yesterday, no tomorrow, only now.”

I am well familiar with the idea of being in the present moment, rather than sacrificing our lived life to dwelling in memory or fixating on what might yet be. But I struggled a little to know how I would be in the moment while also reflecting in the temple of memory. After a few moments, the light came on.

Rather than grief spilling over every moment of life, uncontained and unanswerable, I can preserve, honour, and enter the temple of memory and visit wholly with my absent loved one there. A place of containment, a place of release, a place to love. At this stage in my grief over my brother Victor, that may be exactly what I need.

In our last (dismay!) session, last week, my bereavement counsellor said that it was okay to take a break from grief. A novel concept, with some appeal. My fear is of shutting down again, where the underground grief does damage rather than being attended to and offered healing. But the idea of a temple where I can visit Vic or simply enter to grieve, rather than being twisted by grief in every place and any moment, appeals to me. To tend my grief, to honour Vic’s memory, but to also take breaks. It sounds very good.

All you can depend on now is that

Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.

More than you, it knows its way

And will find the right time

To pull and pull the rope of grief

Until that coiled hill of tears

Has reduced to its last drop.

 

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance

With the invisible form of your departed…

 

 from “For Grief” by John O’Donohue

I don't actually believe that grief “heals,” that there is a last drop, a time where grief no longer is. I believe in making peace with grief, so we don’t reject it and suffer as a result. Because grief is love. And love, I want to keep.

Thinking of all of you, with your sorrows and your losses. Grateful that we all have loved.

“Loss” — sculpture by Jane Mortimer. Faceless but expressive human sitting with arms around knees and head down. Grey-blue against darker blue trees.  Malone House, Malone Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash