As I approach my first Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) with no living grandparents, I think about how I will not share a meal with them again until I join them. This leaves me reflecting on what ways of honoring and remembering my ancestors can fit into my Mennonite practice.
Grief doesn’t disappear. It comes in waves. It changes forms and evolves. It blindsides you. It becomes a part of who you are. Like the shifting light of autumn, we are unexpectedly reminded of new depths of our losses.
A woman who was severely injured when a gunman killed five girls and wounded her and four other girls during an attack on their one-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania has died 18 years later.