'Melancholy: A Way to Happiness'

That's the title of a chapter I read this morning in Ageless Soul: The Lifelong Journey Toward Meaning and Joy by Thomas Moore. I'm enjoying this book. In it, Moore notes how we age throughout our lives--and about how it's natural for melancholy to increase as we get older and see more illness and death in our lives.

Mom, me, Dad

Today marks the sixth anniversary of my dad's death, so it's naturally a melancholy time of year--especially since my mom also died in early spring. As difficult as it is to face the loss of loved ones, I've always felt grateful that my parents both passed from this Earth in its time of rebirth. Spring softened the blow in both cases, even though their deaths could not have been more different. I was just 25 when I suddenly lost my mom; I was 50 when my dad died after years of decline. Both deaths helped prepare me for future losses, but my father's much more gradual passage was much more profound to me because I was old enough to process it in all its complexity.

I remember how, when I was living through my dad's difficult final months, I sometimes referred to the experience as my "holy days of obligation." As his daughter, of course I felt bound to help him through his final days as he and my mom cared for me as a child. That was the obligatory part, the often-difficult work of tending to the ever-shifting needs of someone wrestling with cognitive decline and physical pain he frequently could not articulate.

But it was an unbelievably holy time, too. I remember one evening when I wearily left Dad's apartment, crossing the parking lot to catch my bus on a nearby corner. A full moon had risen and I spontaneously broke into song:

Spirit of life, come unto me, sing in my heart, all the stirrings of compassion ... *

It was a preview of even more profound times to come, culminating in the day Dad said goodbye, three days before Easter 2012. On that day, as my brother and I sat vigil knowing the end was near, the stirrings of compassion became more real. With the help of an angel from hospice, we learned what it means to have a good death.

Moore writes how sadness is part of growing older. We don't need to rage against it; in fact, if we can sit with our melancholy, it need not turn into existential dread or depression "but instead only one strand of mood among others." And that is how I feel this rainy April day: As the best-laid plans sometimes shift and some long-held dreams recede, we learn acceptance and perspective. Or, as Moore says, "If you can allow melancholy its place, you have a better chance to be deeply happy."

* Spirit of Life, a beloved Unitarian Universalist hymn. Words and music by Carolyn Dade.