Margaret Renkl, contributing opinion writer in the New York Times, recently wrote about the importance of sharing grief (NYT 2/4/19), and responding to the grief of others. After the death of her mother, she pored over all the things her mother had saved – an odd assortment of memorabilia that had no meaning to anyone else. But Renkl treasured, or at least wondered about, all of it. She couldn’t throw anything away. She also saved all the notes and cards, emails and FB posts that were sent to her after her mother’s death.

She remarked, “I was desperate to hold onto any shred of evidence that her life mattered, and to far more people than just my brother and sister and me. I needed to keep learning about her from others, now that she was no longer here to keep revealing herself in real time. I needed to be reminded that my own memories were not the only ones keeping her in the world.”

It made me think of the long time after my aunt’s death when I could so feel her presence. I felt that I was holding her up. I continued to care that she had been alive. And in caring, I was acknowledging, and paying homage to, the gift and grace of her life, even though she was gone. I had no idea whether anyone else in the family, or in her group of friends, were remembering her. She had never married (though she had many suitors), and she had never had children. I was afraid she’d be forgotten, or only thought of once in a while, in a passing comment. And for a woman of such spirit and vitality and passion, that just wasn’t enough. I needed to keep her alive. She had been so alive in her life.

I wrote this little note to Min after reading Renkl’s article. Today, on what would have been my aunt’s 111th birthday, I wanted to share it with you:

“I think this is part of why I love being down in Louisiana. There are people who knew you, even if it was when they were children and you were an elder. And even if some had never known you, we share genes and heritage and place. We share habits and passions. We share history. So you’re not gone, you’ve just faded a bit into what has become our background – part of the tapestry into which we now weave the threads of our own lives.

Maybe this is why I wrote Letters from the Love Room; why I continue to share small bits of you as I get through this time now without you. You helped make me what I am. You saw something in me that, through these little notes, I am able to develop and share. I want you to know that I am still holding you up. But I am also holding up myself, and all that went into making me: our talented and quirky family; our luxurious and troubled and feisty southern home ground; this tattered and glorious life. I know you saw the beauty of these, and cared fiercely. I am doing that too. I just wanted to let you know. I am doing that too.”

Sharing our grief and memories with others, and allowing them to share theirs with us, is a way we can participate in the love that has made us up and still carries us along. Relationships are adventures in learning who we are and how we navigate this amazing and arduous work of being alive. I’m pretty sure that the work continues even after a loved one’s death. We reveal the beloved, and together with others, we participate in the work of becoming and revealing ourselves.