Whether you love or dislike having little goblins knocking on your door asking for candy, there’s no getting away from the graveyards, cobwebs, skeletons and silly jack-o-lanterns that have taken over yards, offices and shopping stores everywhere!

I happen to love the children at my door, but for me this season also brings a special awareness of the temporal nature of life, the reality of death, and a meaningful remembrance of loved ones who have gone before.

I have always felt that the most important gift we can give our ancestors is to keep their memories alive.  So in this vein, my husband and I have begun our own tradition of building an “ancestor altar” every year.  Because it’s just the two of us these days, we place the pictures and candles at the end of the dining room table, so that when we sit down to eat, their pictures and memories are there at dinner with us.   We see their pictures, and we naturally begin to share stories – funny, sad, irritating – it’s fun to remember the times when Grandma kept telling the same stories over and over, and how we would shake our heads and pray for a break.   And yet now, those times of impatience and rolling our eyes are so precious to us.   

Perhaps it’s worth our time to remember the gifts we have received from a loved one who is no longer with us in person.   It may be an unexpected, or even an unwanted gift.  Sometimes we gain inner strength or resolve by the harder moments in life.  And yet, these stories of lives that lived before us or alongside us for a while have been foundational in who we are now, our strengths, our gifts, our challenges.

The stories that your people will remember you by are being lived right now.  They’ll be stories of sad, joyful, meaningful times – the stuff of a human life.  May every moment of your precious human life be imbued with love and appreciation – for all of it.