Two weeks ago I hiked into the Leg Lake Cirque with a group of friends for what has become an almost-annual pilgrimage into the site of my first husband’s death.
The final push up to the cliff where he was climbing crosses a large boulder field and then angles up the remnants of an old glacier to the bottom of the route. The ice is pockmarked and dirty in the autumn, making it easy to crunch your way up to where Pete and Steve’s rope, once yellow now faded to white, still hangs. Usually we scramble up to the cliff and create a kind of shrine there at the base, but this year the boulders were covered with a couple of inches of snow and ice. So after some slipping around in the rocks we decided to stop short and create our shrine in the boulders.
We had prayer flags to hang and candles to light. Together we came up with a scheme to string the flags between two large rocks. Underneath we built a small cairn to prop up the red roses I carried. Pete always bought red roses for anniversaries, birthdays, Valentine’s Day … you name it, he bought red roses. I can see him now, smiling and proud of himself for picking the perfect romantic flower. I tried to hint once that red roses had lost some of their power with their ubiquitous presence in the nation’s grocery stores. But Pete never really caught on. For him it was simple: Romance? Red roses. Check.
So I always brought red roses to Leg Lake. It was part of my ritual. Somewhere near the base of the climb the remains of six bouquets lie frozen and desiccated, together with a few candles, some bundles of sage and the six strings of old prayer flags that were part of our annual altar in the rocks.
This year, after we strung up the flags and lit some candles, we sat around silently. For a few minutes no one knew what to do. Despite our ritualized props, we have not come up with any kind of service to follow, no set language to guide our words or actions once we put the altar in place.
Finally we began talking about memories of Pete. I played with the candle flame while the conversation ebbed and flowed. The sun shone down on us. A breeze cooled our skin, reminding us that winter was coming despite the warmth of that October afternoon. The cliff face towered in the shadows behind us, cold, dark and oblivious. We laughed and wept.
After a while, we ran out of things to say and decided it was time to go. We gathered our belongings, pulled our packs back on and began our return hike.
That hike has become a ritual for me. I sometimes feel awkward asking my friends to come along. I wonder if they would prefer not to dredge up the old sorrow. I know it is easier to just go forward, soldier on, eyes ahead. But for me, even though I feel silly and pretentious lighting the candle, stringing up the flags, sending a message of love up to the clouds, I keep doing it. I want to honor Pete and the life we shared. I want to acknowledge his importance and the hole he left behind when he died. And so, with my friends, I’ve created this ritual.
I grew up Episcopalian, but in my teens lost interest and faith in the church and left it behind. Now, although I attend an occasional service at Christmas with my parents, I consider the natural world my real church. But that sanctuary doesn’t give me any guidance when it comes to honoring grief or any of life’s milestones really. After Pete died, I struggled with the fact that I had no traditions to follow, no set modes of behavior. I didn’t have to shave my head or wear black. I didn’t have to sit shivah. I didn’t wash Pete’s body or choose the clothes he’d wear into the afterworld. I had no time-honored ceremonies or practices to guide me and in their absence I floundered.
Years ago I read a story that described a woman’s journey after the death of her mother. I cannot recall who wrote it now, but I remember being struck by how hard it was for the author to cope with her grief without religious or cultural norms to guide her. That story came back to me after Pete died. I felt the same way. Our society seems to place great emphasis on moving forward, getting over it, toughening up. You have your memorial service or ceremony of life or whatever you want to call it and then you go back to your house, your job, your life and do what?
I decided to create rituals. For the first year, Avery and I lit a candle for Pete every night and read poems out loud to each other before we went to bed. On Pete’s birthday each March, I try to do a big ski day in the mountains with friends. Usually someone brings a flask of whiskey to toast him at the top of our climb. Mainly we want to recapture his spirit by working hard like he would have done to acknowledge the passage of another year.
And, of course, I make the pilgrimage into Leg Lake.
I often feel awkward as I perform my made-up ceremonies. I think it’s because I am exposed and vulnerable when I open myself up emotionally and spiritually in front of others. With organized religion, you have the power of history and tradition guiding you through a set of prescribed steps. You can be anonymous as you stand and kneel, pray and sing, reciting words that have been codified for thousands of years. You become part of something bigger than you, and there’s power in that sense of belonging. When you create your own ritual, you have to bumble along, borrowing bits and pieces from others to come up with something that works for you.
Someone asked me once what helped me get through my grief. My response was my community and our rituals. Even when we felt uncomfortable or sheepish to be talking about mysterious, spiritual things together, even when we struggled to put our emotions into words, the act of creating a ritual was healing. It tied us together, honored our shared past and soothed our wounded souls. Which should be no surprise given the power of the world’s religions over the course of human history. Because ultimately it seems to me that religion — whether it’s an organized faith or your own made-up version — helps guide us on our journey through life. Without it, it’s all too easy to lose our way.