‘Tis the Season (for grief altars)…

A grief altar is like a Christmas tree. You set it up at a certain time of the year and decorate it. Except instead of in December, it’s in October. And in lieu of glass bulbs and tinsel, you adorn it with prayer cards and mementos of your dearly departed. Forgo the snowmen, bring the skeletons. Each altar is salvaged carpentry converted into a small staging area with imagery, nooks, platforms, hooks, hangers and small shelves to mount trinkets and mementos symbolic of your late loved ones. I use mine seasonally but that is by no means a requirement. Grief knows no one day or series of days. It exists evermore. What these altars provide is a space in which to dedicate one’s mourning and loss, to honor it. Even to compartmentalize it if need be. These are meant to be a physical manifestation not only loss but of love, for they are always intertwined.