Closure

It's a unicorn.

Earlier this month, we buried the cremains of my cousin, Alli, on the one-year anniversary of her death. It was a somber morning of reminiscence and reflection, followed by an afternoon of frolicking in the lake and pulling kids on the tube. But, at least speaking for myself, the sadness of the morning lingered.

The sadness that day was especial, being the anniversary, being the burial. It marked a moment in time, that Earth had spun once around the Sun since Alli died. But it was not closure, because closure doesn’t exist. It’s a unicorn — a fanciful notion that someone made up.

This idea was planted in my head at dinner a couple nights ago by Suzanne Stabile (aka, the Enneagram Godmother). She’s currently doing a lot of work on loss and grief, and she mentioned that the idea of “closure” was made up.

I first learned about “closure” in a pastoral counseling class in seminary…