Last year, on Palm Sunday, after a few moments of prayer and silence together, I stroked a blend of essential oils across Genia’s forehead and rested my hand on her shoulder, anointing her in the same way the woman in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew honored Jesus’ body with expensive perfume. I foresaw the void I’d feel when her corpse was carried out from that room and out of my reach forever. This is not how last rites go in the prayer book, but Genia and I had become adept at creating meaningful rituals for ourselves. Slowly, laboriously, she reached up to rest her own hand over mine and said, “Thank you.” A fitting goodbye for a woman who maintained her gratitude over a decade of trials and who would be remembered by everyone from her father to the clerk at the Y.M.C.A. as a person capable of being entirely present to others.

Back when we planned her funeral, she asked me not to give a homily but instead to lead the crowd in silent meditation — the kind that had sustained her throughout her illness, the kind we had fumbled our way through together. I immediately thought of the pitfalls — the trouble sitting still, the potential for loud sobbing, the ill-timed cough or high-pitched question in a funeral with a significant number of children. But where I saw the potential failure of ritual, she saw the unexpected beauty. All those she loved sitting in one room, the sanctuary that had held her family for years, breathing together, searching for meaning beyond words, grasping for the thread that connects the living and the dead, clearing the mind to make room for the peace that surpasses understanding.

She was right. In the moment, 850 of us managed to be quiet long enough to surrender to the paradoxical dynamic of letting go and searching for something greater. It was only 10 minutes, one for each year of her cancer, honoring her ability to stay present to life while anticipating her oncoming death. The silence ended with an Emmylou Harris song that Genia had picked out. “When I die, don’t cry for me, I’ll be gone and I’ll be free.”

Despite the song’s command, it seemed that all 850 mourners wept at that moment. But not me. Even as I commended her spirit to God, my voice only broke once. She was gone, my companion in motherhood and centering prayer, her body cremated, her place in the front pew now empty every Sunday.

What I needed was my own mourning ritual, one that unleashed me from the burden of presiding over other people’s grief, one that let me access my own.