On Grief & Mending ~ Being Present for Sorrow: Candle Light Service at Mt. Auburn Cemetery

Mt. Auburn's winding paths in autumn. photo: Brian Lead

Here is a recording of my remarks on Grief & Mending at Mt. Auburn Cemetery on November 19th, 2025. It has come to mind that, just a week before Thanksgiving and the ensuing holiday rush, many people are carrying raw grief. Maybe you, a loved one, or a friend will find some comfort in these words. I know sometimes it is easier to listen than to read.

On Grief & Mending Dina Stander Nov 19 2925 Mt Auburn Cemetery

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On Grief & Mending ~ Being Present for Sorrow

Good evening everyone, I'll begin my remarks with the poem Talking to Grief, by Denise Levertov

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you

like a homeless dog

who comes to the back door

for a crust, for a meatless bone.

I should trust you.

I should coax you

into the house and give you

your own corner,

a worn mat to lie on,

your own water dish.

You think I don't know you've been living

under my porch.

You long for your real place to be readied

before winter comes.

You need

your name,

your collar and tag. You need

the right to warn off intruders,

to consider

my house your own

and me your person

and yourself

my own dog.

~

It is an honor to be here with you today, and I invite us all for this time we share, to let our grief out from under the porch. Lets begin by taking a moment for a breath, allowing the stress of getting here and the concerns of the day to fall away for this time we're sharing. We can wiggle our toes in our shoes to feel the earth holding us up. We can place our hand to our heart to feel the steady rhythm of life thrumming inside our body, reminding us to take the next breath in gratitude for the web of life that connects all beings.

I was just a girl, untouched by loss, when I discovered the peace of burial grounds and found solace playing among the old stones. I'd read aloud the names of the dead and the dates around their dash. I was 20 when I first visited Mt. Auburn Cemetery, a first date with the man I married. An odd and somber choice I thought, until he invited me to wade through fresh snow and we sat close on a bench with a lovely view of Boston in the low sun of a January afternoon. Now, though I live 85 miles to the west, I still find a reason a few times a year to come for a ramble, a talk with the trees and with the spirits, and maybe catch sight of a wading blue heron in a feast of Spring color.

The people buried here at Mt. Auburn, be they plain or trailing fame, rest their bones in the embrace of champion trees. Amidst all the urban bustle, the day to day of intertwined lives, here inside the cemetery walls at Mt. Auburn there is room for our feelings to untuck for a while. There aren't that many places in life where its safe to feel genuinely sad. Here, we can lean into the quiet, long enough that our sorrow can find us and be welcome.

A beloved grave marker at Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge MA\

There is a Hindu folktale, a story of twin siblings who lived in an endless Spring day. When one sibling died the other's sobbing shook the earth, a sorrow so raw that it seemed it might destroy the world. In the story, the elemental gods and goddesses, worried for the welfare of all life, summoned their powers of creation. First they created the sunset. Then, slowly, a gentle blanket of night enveloped the world for the first time. When the surviving twin awoke they beheld the first sun rise, a glorious dance of colors in the eastern sky. In this tale, night came into being to create a way to mark the passage of time, which in grief, allows us to heal.

In the first year after my father died I remember feeling like my own bootstraps could not possibly be strong enough to pull myself up by. So I lit a lot of candles, and slowly the candlelight began to spotlight memories in the way back closet of my mind. Casting shadows on the wall that reminded me of dancing in the kitchen to a song on the radio, my 5 year old bare feet riding on top of dad's shoes. Unbearable and necessary. I lit candles to illuminate a path forward through what I feared might be an endless dark night. And while I worked on finding courage for taking the next breath, and then the next, I began to learn about grief and mending.

To wake up each morning in a world profoundly rearranged by loss requires a courage we often think we lack. But I have seen this courage find it's person even when, bewildered by loss, they cannot find it on their own and don't even know how or where to look. It is so-so-so scary to walk through each day carrying the intense emotions unloosed by great change and death. Still, we rise to the occasion. We lean into the tasks of living through each long day while keeping our grief all buttoned up and set straight, so that folks around us won't be uncomfortable. We learn to grow around our grief, to befriend it even - rather than wishing it away. The way it ebbs and flows, grief becomes a part of who we are, along with all the other gifts we carry.

Here's what I'm still learning about grief and mending. It requires that we accept loss and learn to live with parts missing, and then at our own pace and in our own way we find ways to patch the holes. Grief heals the same way a garment is mended, one stitch at a time. Sometimes you may have to tear a seam out and start again. Sometimes a repair in one corner causes stress in another and we have to come up with creative reinforcements. Sometimes all we need is to sew the buttons on with stronger thread, or maybe add a bright bow. Slowly we learn to hold space for the possibility of feeling whole, even when its momentary and ephemeral. Even when the repairs in our garments show we have been bent low by sorrow. We come to accept that some losses we don't get over any time soon. We honor what is most sacred in human connection: loving and being loved ~ cherishing and letting go.

~ all the candles lit ~

The candles we light here are not only for the people we have lost. Each candle lit tonight represents a grief journey, your grief journey, and this ceremony is a way station. A place to rest awhile in the company of people who are also grieving, and each, in our own way, carrying sorrow. A chance to honor the time between our loved one's death and this moment - every minute of every hour, every hour of every day, that we have made our way without them in the months and years since they died.

I invite you again to take a breath, to wiggle your toes in your shoes, and to place your

hand over your own heart to feel the steady drum of life beating away inside your

body. I'd like to share with you a little meditation for calling in mending.

May I be open to sorrow, and to the pain of grief.

                  May I find the inner resources to be present for my sorrow.

                  And may I forgive myself for mistakes made, needs unmet, and things left undone.

                  May I be open with others and with myself about my experience of loss.

                  May I be open to receive the kindness of others as they support me in this                    journey of grief.

                  May I be open to letting sorrow rest, so that joy can also find me.

                  And for that which remains unspoken, we give thanks.

And finally, I don't believe that grief has linear named stages, no matter how untidy.

And despite her fame for the concept, neither did Elizabeth Kubler Ross. For me the

river of feelings we name as grief has always been more of a unruly scribble on the

page that sometimes changes to a puddle, or a tornado, or even a nostalgic purple line.

So let us be reminded that we are not required to move on or get over the losses that

bring us here today. Healing and mending are not erasing. In the midst of grief, in

times of bone on bone, love doesn't prevent the inevitable raw scraping of loss inside

us. We carry our bones with us into love, and in loss we carry them still. But the

promise of a ramble with our people resting here in sacred ground, like the motion of

lighting a candle, offers the solace of turning away from our complaints. And finding

instead (like the surprise of a dandelion blooming in February) a small golden

possibility that foretells a new season. Promising the gentle hum of pollinating bees.

Its ok not to be ok, and, we're going to be ok.

~

Musicians playing in the chapel during the Service.

Program for the Service

The bones of Story Chapel, Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge MA