Remembrance. What collective grief teaches that private grief cannot.

In Vienna, the end of October brings the feast of All Souls — a day when families visit graves, light candles, and acknowledge the dead collectively. My children have come with me since they were small. They have learned, in the way that children learn things that are shown to them rather than explained, that grief has a public form as well as a private one. That the loss of individuals is also the loss of communities. That ceremony is not superstition — it is the social technology that allows grief to be held collectively rather than individually.

I was not brought up with this — I came to it as an adult, living in Vienna. What I noticed, when I first participated in the collective grief of the All Souls ceremony, was that the grief felt different in company. Not lighter, exactly. More bearable. The bearability came from the company — from the shared acknowledgment that the dead exist and are worth remembering. The ceremony creates the occasion. The occasion creates the permission. The permission changes what grief can be.

In Vienna, the end of October brings the feast of All Souls — a day when families visit graves, light candles, and acknowledge the dead collectively. My children have come with me since they were small. They have learned, in the way that children learn things that are shown to them rather than explained, that grief has a public form as well as a private one.