What we learn about death we learn first from our families.

My first funerals reflected both sides: the sensuous and awe-provoking elements of the Catholicism practiced by the Czernek/Jahns, and the minimalist, heady Jewish ceremonies on the Metcoff side. While I was not raised Catholic–and was reminded as my sisters and I remained seated in the pews during communion that our family was different– I appreciated passing into this space of mystery, of echo, of smells on the West side of Chicago when I came to mourn the passing of my grandmother, aunt, uncles, cousin. I was honored to act as pallbearer and be invited to read lines of scripture to the congregation that were unfamiliar to me. It didn’t feel like mine at the moment, but I wanted to be connected to the lineage of worship that half of my family followed. 

Did my grandma practice these same traditions before she came to America? How long had this opulence been a part of their worship? When had the traditions of Slavic paganism slipped away? How had my family exchanged these traditions for the promise of whiteness? 

Reliquaries are conceptual cabinets of curiosity. They are dizzyingly ornate to conjure Divine Wholeness via a tibia or carpal. The delicately gilded case and cloak are nothing in comparison to the salvation of finding heaven through faith alone.  The space contained is that of belief, an aurified suspension of cruel criticism, an elevation of the human to the divine, an earthly representation of ascension. How to take the torture inflicted for piety of the unknowable and turn it into a blessing of forgiveness?