Tomb Tender

I didn’t tend to her tomb the way I didn’t tend to my wounds.

We didn’t go to the cemetery because my sister said she wasn’t there. And I believed her, or maybe I needed to. I spent years turning my head away from headstones because every one of them had my mother’s face. It was easier not to think about her. The opposite looked like too much; too wide, too dark, too permanent. So when she crossed my mind, I crossed the street. I drank. I smoked. I ran into the arms of people who said they loved me even when I couldn’t feel it, because somewhere underneath everything I had already decided: no one would love me like my mother anyway, so what was the point? Maybe nothing would ever be good enough.

We let the grass grow. We let the weeds take over the headstones; her name, my grandmother’s, my uncle’s, my grandfather’s, my father’s, and we moved on, soaked in our sadness, pretending moving on was the same thing as healing.

I didn’t pick flowers and lay them on top. I didn’t pull the weeds from her stone or wash it in oil. I stayed away as long as I could. I was fourteen years old and no one told me that grief doesn’t feel heavy forever. That she would still be with me. That the tomb could roll.

What I know now is that tending is not the same as dwelling.

It took years of therapy and enough courage scraped together in small handfuls before I could go back. The last time I went home, I went to find them. Their graves, all of them. I stood there. I let myself stand there.

Now I tend. On their birthdays and their death days, I eat something they would have loved, drink something they would have reached for, say their names out loud into whatever room I’m in. Sometimes I don’t do anything special, I just do something I enjoy, and I think of them while I’m doing it. I let them come with me instead of leaving them behind.

I no longer run from thinking about them because they are always with me. You cannot ignore something that is part of you. You cannot outrun what made you.

And to the girl who was fourteen, turning her head from every cemetery, running toward anything that felt like warmth

I would not tell her not to cry or to just move on. There is no version of losing your mother at fourteen where you don’t cry. But I would sit with her and I would tell her: she is always with you.

One day you will smell her perfume in the wind and know, in your bones, without explanation, that she put it there. One day you will accomplish something and feel a warmth move through you that has no other name. One day you will dream of her smile and wake up not destroyed but held.

Keep walking with everyone you’ve lost.

Remember them. Honor them. Carry them forward.

You will find reasons to smile again. You will find reasons to laugh. The earthquake will come, as it always does, and the tomb will roll, and what you thought was sealed forever will open into light.

God is not a human like us, limited and exhausted and afraid. God is in the wind, the fire, the water. God is the balance that holds even when we can’t. And even when unfortunate things happen, and they will, that faithfulness does not leave.

I want to tend to my wounds.

I want to tend to tombs.

And I pray one day someone tends to mine.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​