This is NHPR’s The Big Question. In this series, we ask you a question about life in New Hampshire, you submit an answer, and your voice may be featured on air or online.
Saying goodbye to people we care about is a part of life. Sometimes we see it coming, other times it touches our life when we didn’t expect it to, but finding ways to remember those who have passed can keep them with us.
So, for November’s Big Question, we asked: How do you honor those you’ve lost?
Here’s what some of you said:
Robin Peringer - Brookline, NH: The way that our family has traditionally honored our family that has passed is that we plant a tree for them. My dad would always do that. He was from Hungary and he came from a farming family. We had 45 fruit trees in our yard, but he would always plant another fruit tree every time we had a relative that would pass away. So we had many, many trees, which was lovely. We've carried on the tradition as well, even though my dad has now passed. When he passed, I had my fellow art teachers purchase a ginkgo biloba tree for me so that I'd always remember him. And I've done the same thing for my grandmother. I've planted apple trees for her.
You can have trees that are thousands and thousands of years old and just that thought and that connection to the people we love that have passed, it's just made such a great impact for me and for my family in terms of remembering others. I like to just say, ‘Hi Mémère or hi Uncle Eddie,’ and it makes me feel connected to them once again.
Katy Holmes - Sandwich, NH: Shortly after my mother died of ALS in 2002, I began to notice blue herons flying overhead or standing near where I was. I don't live near the water, so finding one in a pond or flying overhead gave me goosebumps. And [I see them] less often now, maybe I've moved on some. My mother was such a graceful, tall, beautiful person. When I see a blue heron, I think of her. I just take that moment to say, ‘Hi mom.’ At first, out loud with a wave, and then overtime, more quietly to myself.
Marjorie Moorhead - Lebanon, NH: I wrote a poetry chapbook having to do with my father, who passed. I knew I had a collection of poems that I'd written about him during his illness and leading up to his death, and then even after his death, my sort of travel through grief about it. So I decided to compile them and it was published. Now I have this beautiful little book that honors him. It's called ‘In My Locket.’ And I feel like it actually is sort of like a locket that you can open. There's this permanent little memento of my dad and how I dealt with his passing and honoring him that way.
Meg Kerr - Dover, NH: What we've always done in my family is plant a lot of snowdrops. They're the first flowers that come up in the spring, literally through the snow. When my dad was dying over 50 years ago, we brought him snowdrops at the hospital and he looked at them and he said, ‘Plant a lot of these.’ So we have. We planted them at the house where I grew up. I've planted them at every single place I've lived, [in] friends' yards, the library in the town where we grew up, cemeteries everywhere.
When they come up in the spring, I always contact my brothers and say, ‘Hey, the first one came up.’ And often, it's on the anniversary of his death, which seems kind of cool to us. Then we give little bouquets away and it gives us a chance to talk about our dad. The snowdrops actually are really hopeful. You plant them in the late fall and then wait and then they come up. So I guess it's just a reminder about the process. The whole grief process is such a long one that kind of emerges in spurts. That’s how we honor my dad.
