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From Death, to Guiding the Soul Home, Ecological Grief and Anxiety

My grandmothers wake was my first real experience of a death ritual. I remember the rattle of teacups on saucers, and rosary beads in hands within a circle of elderly women all sharing stories about my gran. My gran lay in her open coffin in the middle of the circle, tenderly cared for with an outreached hand to smooth her hair as memories were recalled.

It was a few decades later when in the last weeks of her life a good friend asked me to keen over her body when her time came. There is no polite backing out of a request like that and while I was honored she had asked me she asked me I was also somewhat terrified.

Each step in keening has been challenging but wildly rewarding, I didn’t expect any of this to be easy when you’ve been brought up in a grief phobic culture. There’s even times today when I find myself crying - silently!

After my friend was laid in the earth with much ritual and singing, ceremony and flowers, keening didn’t just finish. I held a keening ritual as part of an Imbolc celebration, it was the Goddess Brighid who was said to bring keening into the world. This circle was an invitation to speak to grief, to all those things that can build up in us and leave us overwhelmed and shut down. A keening in the face of climate devastation, of grief for the planet, grief for ourselves and the ensuing anxiety.

Keening was cathartic. We began by bringing our grief into sacredness, by honoring it. I got everyone to make silly noises, to warm up voices and got our bodies moving. Music was the great invitation to sink down and be with grief. In those circles we cried, got mad, lay down sobbing and then slowly came bak to gather again. We engaged with rituals that spoke speaking to grief, then sat on the floor, ate and shared our experiences. Our grief wasn’t completely gone, but it had moved, it was no longer stuck and we could feel the difference.

Since the pandemic it’s taken me a while to work out how to offer this online, it’s in a very different format but it works. Keening, like grief, takes practice and so online circles offer just that, practicing our grief skills, as we reclaim this ancient tradition for our needs today.

Keening Resources

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