May the Light Return

This is a story about gratitude. About grace. And a little bit of abundance, maybe. Perhaps the prayer is really for abundance, to overflow, but in a good way: a flood of joy, perhaps. But first it is a story of broken-heartedness, of emptying. If anyone knows the path to gratitude without passing first through grief, I’ve never heard it told. 

You see, last Winter Solstice we were in the preparations for mourning. If we had been able to gather, we would have each stayed in turn with the dying man: my father, but also husband, grandfather, friend, neighbour, and a person filled with his own broken-heartedness that he had tried to keep hidden away. He would make it past Christmas, a holiday I never cared much for anyway, and which that year felt particularly lonely. I was only living in Ireland four months, and apart from my wife, everybody who knew the particular complications of my family were thousands of miles and hours apart. I waited, and the guilt of not being there planted a rotten seed in my heart.

When the grief came, the water poured uncontrollably from my eyes. My bones seemed to be wringing his life out of me. I had to release that vitality which gave rise to me, that unknowable element which I inherited. It came without thought or reason, an inner storm to match the dark and miserable weather pounding against my apartment windows. Awash in an abundance of grief, no celebration of New Year could bring me glad tidings. I slept, and prayed to whoever would listen for the wellbeing of my father’s soul, that he would feel my love despite the uncrossable chasm between life and death. 

As a death doula and an interfaith revered, I know the importance of marking these moments of transition. Though we could not gather, we arranged for a memorial over Zoom to be held the weeks after his death. I scoffed that the first day of Irish spring was also the first day of snow, but already the light was changing, the darkness slipping away. As an ardent atheist, his memorial made no mention of God, but rather we spoke of the mysterious grace which gave him ten years of sobriety to heal our wounds together. We shared stories of his leadership, his commitment to his values, his cleverness. We cried, then laughed, and if we could have held each other, we would have squeezed one another breathless.

Still, the light grew. I celebrate a personal anniversary every 1st of March, and despite the lockdown I was determined to find the nature of Cork City and spend it there, contemplating the year behind me. As the last day of February faded into the beginning of the new month, I fell into a rich sleep, enlivened by dreams. There we were, my siblings and my parents. My mother peered out the window, oblivious to the scene. My sister complained, as she does. My father, though, smartly dressed, looked toward me as if anticipating some remembrance. I stepped away, confused, and only then did I realize that this was my chance. 

We cried, then laughed, and if we could have held each other, we would have squeezed one another breathless.

There he was, shimmering, in his best cowboy hat and finest jacket. The death mask of his final days had smoothed back into a younger, fully alive presence; he radiated happiness. I ran into his arms and melted in the tightness of his embrace, as I said: ‘I was afraid you would think I didn’t love you, I wasn’t there.’ And with his response, ‘How could I think that? You show me everyday?’ The dream dissolved, and I awoke, awash now in that radiating happiness, still lingering. 

A seed of gratitude found its way into my heart, edging out the rotten guilt which had tried so desperately to sprout. Seasons changed, gracefully, and changed again, and with the grace of time my father’s ashes were finally buried. His loss echoes in our family still, but the abundant grief is rarer now. Instead, I return again and again to the dream of radiating happiness, like others return to their beloved dead’s gravestone, to visit and remember. Approaching this Solstice, the darkest days of the year, I wonder: how will the sorrow mingle with the returning light? When I light my Hanukkah candles, and the Lenten candles, and the Solstice candles, and finally, the yahrzeit candle, I open my prayer to the others suffering from a wholly broken-heartedness:

May the darkness give way to the returning light. May the seed of gratitude be planted in all our hearts. May the illumination of radiating happiness envelop us all.