A Season of Remembering

By Joezeth Best-Morgan

Belgroves Funeral Home Limited

As All Saints and All Souls approach, I find myself reflecting not only on the lives of those who have gone before us, but on the singular, immeasurable loss of my mother.

I wasn’t home when she passed. I was abroad, far away, and that distance has carved a different kind of wound, one that carries disbelief. To this day, there are moments when I still can’t accept it. My heart waits for a call, a message, some reminder of her presence. But instead, I’m left with silence and memory.

The holiday season is one of the hardest times. Where once there was joy, now there’s guilt, guilt for smiling too wide, for celebrating too much, for feeling like the world keeps moving while part of mine has stopped. I walk through Christmas mornings, birthdays, and Mother’s Days with a heaviness that lingers. Even the simplest things, like a favorite dish she loved, have become complicated. Food that once brought comfort now feels like a quiet ache. Scents that once warmed my soul now transport me to the moment of loss.

And yet, love is still there woven into every pang of grief. Love is what I taste when I decline a certain meal because it feels too much. Love is what I smell when a fragrance brings her back to me. Love is what I carry when I light a candle on All Saints’ Day, or kneel in quiet prayer on All Souls’, honoring not just her, but all those who live on in spirit.

Grief, I’ve learned, is not something you move past, it is something you walk with. On days like these, when the church bells toll and we remember the faithful departed, I try to hold grief gently, as if it is an extension of love. Because, in truth, it is.

I don’t have all the answers to navigating this journey. But I know that in remembering, in honoring, in letting myself feel the ache and the love at once, I keep her close. This season of remembrance reminds me that she is never far, she is part of the great communion of saints, held in God’s eternal care, and forever etched into the very fabric of who I am.

So I light a candle. I whisper a prayer. And I continue to walk with her, in grief, in love, in hope.

Photo by Wolfgang Rottmann on Unsplash