March 6th, 2011

It'd be shameful to let a March 7th pass by and not remember. As Elie Wiesel said, "To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time."

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This March 7th came and passed quite peacefully. It's truly amazing what time can do for the emotions. The day was full of talk of death, including a reading of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam" (a poetic account of his mourning at the death of a young friend). Tennyson's account details his three year grieving process and the cycles of faith and doubt that accompanied it.

I found this parallel striking, because last year's March 7th, (which was the 3 year marker since Erin's passing), was the completion of my grieving process as well. I'll share some words from my journal, recorded March 6th of this year:

"For a while, I didn’t let myself feel. I cried when she died, but mostly, I let other people do the crying...I found my own ways to mourn, to miss her. I thought that I was handling things happily and healthily.

And then last year was excessively difficult.

It seemed strange really. Last March 7th marked three years since she’d passed. You think I would have taken it harder on year one, or two or even ten. But three years meant something big and heavy for me and my heart.

I cried often and wanted to talk to people about her. I told my superiors, my friends, my soon-to-be friends; I wanted people to know that this little, lost being was a huge part of me. I wanted people to remember her, as I was struggling to.

My mourning process was not complete until March 6th, when it was my turn to teach Gospel Doctrine. The topic? I don’t remember. But I do remember that the Spirit led and directed it. I love it when that happens.

Still, when I think back on that day, I think about it as the completion of my mourning process. I have a distinct visual imprinted in my mind: staring out at the seats in front of the whiteboard, filled with a few faces of ones I really loved, others that I cared about quite dearly, and a handful I didn’t know very well. Through eyes clouded with tears, I told them about my darling Erin. They listened and some cried with me. But I cried hard. In a way that I really don’t allow myself to do in front of other people. I exposed the weakness and fragileness of my heart in a really real sense, and I finally felt whole.


Thus, this year has been a lot easier...There are lots of things that still remind me of her. Sometimes they are sad and tragic things, but sometimes, they are beautiful, tender, larger-than-life happy things.

So today’s message: Don’t forget to remember. And treat every person as if it was your last day with them. As if you’d never be able to relive those moments. Sometimes you won’t be able to."