Prayers of the People

We pray for all who have died, that they may have a place in your eternal kingdom. Remember especially...
--Book of Common Prayer, 393

I said your name again, your simple name.
First name, last name, four syllables spoken into the silence.
I hadn't said your name out loud in five years.
It sounded like glass breaking.
like a magic spell: sacred, full of potential,
powerful enough to break a heart, again.

There are three categories of names, I'm told.
The merely living, the merely dead, and the famous.

Marlene Dietrich, Napoleon, Elvis.
Dead is no the first thing you think of.
Living reverberates in the name.
His story, her story, floating on the surface
of knowing minds; wreckage
that refuses to sink into oblivion.

But you are the merely dead.
As I speak your name into the chapel,
it sinks into the shadows and dissapates.
No other mind in this place carries your living memory,
or your dead name. Not even for the length of four syllables.
Remembering the living and the famous
is hard enough. The dead have no place among us.

And I am merely living.
Not worthy of special mention, certainly not famous.
But when I say your name, after five years,
it is like bringing a diamond out of the dark mine of my heart,
where you have lived in the crushing weight of my grief,
in the cherishing clutch of my memory.

Now, when I bring your name into this room,
saying this prayer for the dead, it bursts from my lips,
into the quiet air, like a bouquet thrown over my shoulder,
and no one tries to catch it.
But it never touches the ground,
because God takes it, and pulls it to himself;

Your name, your sweet name, glowing in the altar candles,
sweeping the cobwebs, ascending into heaven.