Start somewhere. That’s the phrase that best answers the spoken and unspoken wondering of “Where do I begin to include the realm of ancestors in my life?”
There’s no one template. But there is our imagination, our hunger, and the renewed communal interest in completing a circle of belonging. The natural world is alive and our dead are not “gone”… but we need to welcome and make room for them.
My friend Andrea sent me a picture of what she was up to this morning. (See below.) She told me that she had to take down a magnolia tree that had become diseased, but she left the stump—as a way to honour the tree that she had loved so well and missed terribly. Then she saw that her clay planter, left out all winter, had cracked and broken. Another sad moment. But then she had an inspiration: frame the stump with this broken clay vessel.
As she was doing so, her parents came to mind: her mother, who had died a few years ago, and her father who died just a few days later. She then realized she was creating an altar of remembrance to them with what was at hand in this extraordinary ordinary moment on the land she calls home.
Now, she needed a living plant. At the nursery, she saw just the right one, a gorgeous climbing clematis. As she placed the vine by the planter and stump, she felt a shiver, then her parents’ presence. It was one of those moments that take us by surprise and by the hand, waking up a bone memory of how to honour being part of a place and belonging to a particular people.
Andrea avidly wrote, “I see this earth altar as one way to tend the death of both my parents. Being at your book launch and hearing you speak has been working on me—and look what’s come of it. Simple… but it’s a start.”
Start somewhere, anywhere, and the next step will come…
Andrea’s Earth Altar, remembering her parents…
Order The Call to the Far Shore: Carrying Our Loved Ones Through Dying, Death, and Beyond through your local bookstore, Amazon, and most major booksellers.
Review: “What a weight in gold the pages of this book The Call To The Far Shore offer us! This book must be available to all who walk the earth and will depart from it.” — Phyllida Anam-Aire, Irish poet, psychotherapist, and author of A Celtic Book of Dying, The Last Ecstasy of Life, and Let Love Heal
https://www.amazon.ca/Call-Far-Shore-Carrying-through/dp/B0D9TMVNL9
The Call to the Far Shore: Carrying Our Loved Ones Through Dying, Death, and Beyond. Amazon.com
Audiobook now available: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Call-to-the-Far-Shore/Nancy-MacMillan/9781797187204
—Some pictures below from last week’s book launch. A beautiful event with a Q &A that became a deep and moving conversation. My thanks to all those who attended. Special thanks to Aileen Stewart and Janeta Kobes for the graceful and eloquent introduction, to Wendy Luella and Andrea Leyton for their soulful gift of music, to Barbra Rose, Andrea, and Teresa for setting up and refreshments, to TJ Kerr for photography, and Michael Hurley for so much of everything. And Novel Idea for selling all the books!
For more info check out my website: nancymacmillan.com and follow me on instagram: www.instagram.com/nancyjmacmillan/
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