Watching dozens of candle flames flicker around the altar, I caught my breath and held it in an effort to keep tears from streaming down my cheeks while standing next to my students. It was All Saints and All Souls mass at the Catholic high school where I teach. A part of this mass included remembering those who had died in the past year – grandparents, parents, siblings, and others in some way connected to the school community. Never before had I experienced a community ritual to process grief and loss. My thoughts turned to those I have lost; particularly my brother-in-law as this December marks ten years since his passing. 

These dates in the liturgical calendar for All Saints and All Souls – November 1st and 2nd – are solemn days. I am new to teaching in a Catholic school and somewhat new to the liturgical calendar. The experience of gathering in remembrance surprised me in its simultaneous beauty and pain. I wasn’t used to having grief and loss acknowledged in a communal setting. After all, I belong to a church where grief is handled with phrases such as “Think Celestial.” While at times it can be helpful to zoom out to keep a larger perspective in mind, the approach of papering over emotion is not helpful in processing the grief and loss that are a part of life. The healing power of gathering in community to remember saints and souls proved unexpectedly beautiful in its bitter sweetness.

While many cultures throughout the world have rituals for grief and loss, I sadly feel a lack of ritual in my life and church experience. When my brother-in-law unexpectedly died a few days before Christmas, the viewing was held on Christmas Eve and the funeral the day after Christmas and that was that. As I slogged through those days, I wondered while picking up a pizza one night how many people around me were mourning. I did not find American funeral practices helpful. At the time, I didn’t even have the language to identify my feelings as grief and loss. I learned that years from a friend who was in graduate school to make a career change to be a therapist. Later I learned the value of rituals from my own therapist.

Rituals for grief and loss help us process emotions we experience in life. This summer my family was enjoying a few days in a lovely small town on the Mediterranean coast of France when my college-aged daughter received news that a high school classmate of hers died while hiking. While my daughter was not close friends with this classmate, she still knew this person and had been in dance classes with this person in a fairly tight-knit performing arts school. The reality of death hit my daughter hard. I talked with her about a variety of physical, tangible ways she could remember this classmate. My daughter decided to visit the small cathedral in town and light a candle in remembrance of her classmate. 

A small moment of lighting a candle is a ritual that can help process grief and loss. Grief and loss is not limited to death and grieving can spring from a variety of situations. For me, I often feel grief and loss when there is a misalignment with the world as it is and the way I think the world can be. Grief and loss has also sprung from disappointment, from painful experiences, and knowledge of others’ pain such as the horrific suffering in Gaza and Ukraine. 

I learned from my experience in mass that gathering in community can be a powerful way to process grief and loss. People in the Book of Mormon felt so strongly about mourning with those that mourn that it led them to make a covenant – an unbreakable familial bond with God. There is power in community; we need each other. I very much wish that in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that we had days like All Saints and All Souls. I wish we were taught to be present; to simply sit by one another as we ride the waves of life. There is no need to bury emotions with positivity. We can simply be in the moment; we can simply acknowledge the presence of grief and loss. Just like ingredients for cookies (or your favorite dish) need to be mixed before being transformed in an oven, grief and loss need acknowledgement before they can be let go and given to God and/or transformed and transmuted into wisdom, healing, etc. 

Life provides plenty of opportunities to become familiar with grief and loss. On 28 September 2025, a man in Grand Blanc, Michigan, USA, fired a gun inside an LDS meetinghouse killing one person and injuring many people. The risk of an open fire gun attack, however small, is one I live with daily as a teacher so while sad, this news wasn’t shocking to me. It was shocking for some people who were suddenly aware and affected in a way that they hadn’t been before that this happened in their community and could happen to them. 

Because I live with this threat daily, I admit I was at first a bit annoyed that so many people can go about their days blissfully unaware of the dangers of mass shootings. As a teacher, I have annual intruder and active shooter training and my school holds mandated periodic drills with students. Every time I open my classroom door in the morning, I slide the LockBlok to the unengaged position. Every time I leave my classroom at lunch I slide the LockBlok and slide it again after lunch. I slide it again at the end of the day. It is a physical touchstone reminding me of the small yet constant potential danger. This school year I often think of the September shooting at the Catholic school in Minnesota. This is life for me; responding to an intruder or a person shooting is something I could likely do in my sleep. It is sometimes exhausting though. When I pause to think about the risk, my heart feels turbulent knowing that I would absolutely do what is required to protect my students even though such action would likely leave my own kids at risk of losing me, their mom. 

For those who are new to the knowledge of this danger in the world, the events in Michigan seemed to hit like a gut punch. It took me a moment to remember that my covenant is to mourn with those that mourn. We so very much need each other. We need community. I grow more and more convinced that community is why we have church. Those of us in the LDS church can learn from the rituals our Catholic siblings have because we too need ways to mourn and process in community. Even a mention of the Michigan events over the pulpit would be a step forward from the silence that seems to prevail now. For more ideas about processing grief and loss in community, this article is a great place to start: The Growing Movement to Bring Back Community Grief and Ritual. 

Bringing community back into the church would also be a great place to start moving towards community rituals for grief and loss. After all, we can’t process grief and loss as a community if there isn’t a community to begin with. Blogger Candice Wendt has pointed out how much we have lost community in the church in writing The Insidious Exchange of Community for Covenants. We can turn this around though. My daughter’s ward has a standing once-a-month potluck. I love when I get to visit her on potluck Sundays. This is one idea; I am confident that we are creative enough to think of ways to create what is needed in our particular circumstances with our particular resources.

Something else to consider is that while the church provides a structure, there is no need to depend on the church and wait for often overworked and under-resourced leaders to provide what is needed. I am adopting some of the habits of the liturgical calendar in my life and family because it is a structure that already exists; a structure that grounds me to the rhythm of changing seasons. Other resources include parent groups, making dinner groups with friends, finding resources available through meet-up groups, library groups, etc, etc. It does take effort. The beauty is that as adults, we can reach out to others in ways that align with our values and desires and are within reach of the capacity we have. Even a simple group text of friends can provide community. Right now, that is often all I am able to do and it is ok. I have grand dreams of Twelfth Night parties in January and of summer barbecues; of fall bonfires and cozy winter dinners. Right now, reality is that it took me a couple of weeks to get one brunch scheduled with my family and another family that we are friends with. And then two-thirds of my family got sick and we had to reschedule brunch.

In the meantime, I am grateful for the bloggers and readers of Exponent II. This is a place that prioritizes community over conformity. This is a group that stretches across time and place from whenever and wherever you are reading this to Boston in 1974 to Salt Lake City in the 1870s. Tonight I will light a candle in remembrance of all who gather here at Exponent II – whether virtually on the blog, in reading the magazine, or attending the annual retreat – in an effort to share each other’s stories as we journey together through life.