My blog is late this week. The day that I typically write this blog I was told the horrific news that my dear friend had died. I did not, and frankly do not, have the words to tell you how broken my heart is at this moment. How can I tell you about my confusion? What is there to say about the suddenness of his departure and the wideness of the chasm he has left in my life and the lives of the 200 people that came yesterday to lay his body in the ground. I cannot. 

There are no words.

But in the place of words there is action. The sisters, wife, nieces and me, the friend, washed his body, sang to him, anointed him with oil and wrapped him in a shroud to prepare him for burial. We did this in a room full of candles and flowers and quilts made by grandmothers.  At the entrance to that room was a large statue of Mother Mary. 

As I washed my friend’s feet I glanced toward Mary and thought to myself, 

I am not the first woman to wash the body of her love and I will not be the last. 

Suddenly my grief turned to connection. I was connected to all the mothers, lovers, sisters, friends who throughout time have been the bearers of grief, the tenders of souls, the givers of compassion, an ancient and sacred sisterhood of those that birth bodies and then prepare them to return from where they came. 

We do not do this because we want to, we do this because there are no words. We do this because we desperately need to be connected, one to the other,  in our diverse forms of love and longing and in our shared grief.

There can be no grief without first there being great love. 

I do not think that I will ever have the words to tell you how my heart broke three days ago. And yet I know that a broken heart is an open heart, and that into an open heart the whole world can fall. 

As I heal the brokenness I will keep the openness. I do not need words because my heart will lead me to action. I will tend and care and love. And I will connect with others who are called to the same, because in my dear friends words, “We are all in this thing together.”

Once put in the ground or burned in the fire, the dead are no longer our concern. This may sound harsh or even cruel and maybe it is. But there is simply nothing we can do for the dead. But in their honor, we can fight like hell for the living. We can and we must, fight like hell for those that are still in their bodies on this earth;  hungry or alone, in prison or left to the streets. 

This is what we are all called to do, between the giving birth and the burial preparation. We are each of us in our own ways, here for this reason; to make life better for others. If you don’t have words today either, that is okay.  There are so many people who need you to reach out to them, to love them, to tell them they belong, to fight for them and with them. 

That is resurrection.