Speaking with the Dead
Honouring our lost loved ones and becoming their living legacy
The festive season can be a very difficult time of year for people who are grieving a lost loved one. Perhaps for some of you it will be your first Christmas without a parent, partner, child or dear friend. For others, you might be grieving the loss of someone who remains in physical form only, but is lost to you in all other ways, like in the case of dementia or addiction. I hope there is something here that might support and comfort each of you in your grief….or indeed, for when it is your turn to lose someone and then to grieve them, which will be the case for all of us, if we are privileged enough to be around that long.
I am often asked by people if it’s a good idea to still ‘include’ their deceased love one in family celebrations, and of course this is a very personal choice. I am simply offering my perspective here, as someone who has experienced grief personally, as well as been around it in a professional capacity for many years.
The first thing I would say is that great comfort can be found in speaking with the dead. In fact the Mexicans believe that death is part of the larger cycle of life, and that the dead continue to have an intimate relationship with the living. This belief is reflected in the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead, or Día de los Muertos, which is a time to remember and celebrate the lives of deceased loved ones. There is a brilliant children’s film about this called Coco.
A Different Relationship
When my mum died 14 years ago at just 68 years old, I began to cultivate a different kind of relationship with her than the one I had when she was alive. Like many mothers and daughters, our relationship had been a complicated one for many years. I only really got to know her properly, as a woman first and my mother second, (this is a clue that you’ve done your mother wound work btw), when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and we were gifted 4 years to finally meet and get to know each other, without the ghosts of the past blocking our view.