Marking the Grave*

I’m a priest. My husband is a land surveyor. So, it would stand to reason that we would find ourselves marking off a grave from time to time.

Measuring tape in hand. Survey flags by our side.

I call this “other duties as assigned.”

It’s the things no one tells you about when you take your ordination vows. Or, in my husband’s case…the things no one tells you about the obscure duties of a clergy spouse.

I’m not sure how other churches do it. Maybe they hire a local surveyor. My guess is that a clergy/survey couple is hard to come by so we take on the task when the need is there.

We find the survey posts, mark off the grid and measure. Double and triple checking as we go. It seems like simple math. 10 feet this way. 4 feet that way.

(10x4 is the size of each gravesite in the church cemetery.)

But it is so much more than math.

It is the sacred act of honoring a life. A life that has no measurement.

And, it’s hard.

And, it’s gets harder every time I do it.

I’ve been at my parish for 10 years. 10 years of “doing life” with these special people. I was called to be here and I take that call seriously. Probably too seriously because when I lose someone, I feel it so deeply in my heart. They tell you in clergy world to maintain good boundaries and for a while I thought my depth of sorrow was the result of poor boundaries. But I have come to realize that it has nothing to do with boundaries.

Sorrow at the loss of a life, especially someone you have known and cared for over the years, is the most natural feeling you could possibly have. Because there is a hole in the universe now and you feel it. You feel the shift in the joy she carried into the room. You feel a shift in the laughter that you can carefully recall if you concentrate. Things are a little quieter.

And so as I marked off this grave I did so remembering every aspect of the life we were there to honor. A life that had no measurement.

At a funeral we try to say words that encompass what we valued in the person we lost and those stories are always good for the soul. But how do you describe in one service what this particular life was all about? I could list words to describe someone but even then, a person’s life is held in public and in private…the things seen and unseen, the spoken hopes and dreams and the private longings of the heart. The milestone accomplishments and the difficult failures. The simple moments around the kitchen table. The solitary walks with only your thoughts for company.

We may try to measure a life because that measurement may be all that we have at times. It’s the only thing that brings some sense of understanding. It’s a point of reference, a survey post, that stands as a reference to our memories.

But I wonder…if we let go of the measurement would we find something much more comforting? A comfort that brings into clarity the expansiveness of who we are? Something that at its heart reminds us that life is more than we could ever define. And the same is true for death.

There is an inexplicable divine wonder to living and dying. An expansiveness that doesn’t hold too tightly to endings and beginnings. When I feel sorrow for someone I have lost, I remember that sense of divine wonder and the expansiveness that I will never be able to describe. I remember that the life I want to measure is now part of something greater than any equation can calculate.

I find that comforting. Because when I want to see that person just one more time or hear their laughter or see their smile I try to remind myself that the ending and beginning I am mourning is only a part of that grand equation.

And maybe, letting go of the need for definitives is the marker upon which we can move into a place of greater peace.

So as I said those words, ashes to ashes and dust to dust, what I was offering (to myself and to the family) was the knowledge of continuity. Continuity of our souls. Continuity of our memories. Continuity of the grace and love and goodness that will always be with us.

And that’s a life worth honoring.

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