To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.

Thomas Campbell, Hallowed Ground (1825)

My dad died in January.

It was pretty unexpected. He was too young, we were very close, and this death is the first death of someone so close to me in my life. I’ve always really loved the idea that when I die, my body will be the source of new life—that as the atoms that could be called me before will dissipate, they will become parts of stars and trees and philosophers in the future. But that’s me. That doesn’t bring me as much comfort for the death of someone else. I don’t miss my dad’s atoms. I miss that incomprehensible whole that comes together, which some might call a soul.  

I think the hardest part about grieving for me is all the future conversations I will not have with him. I’ve always talked through tough decisions with him. And he is my favorite person to talk with about news, politics, theology, and history. I haven’t been able to follow the news these last few months because too many stories make me want to call him to get his take. It’s been difficult for me to write since he died, since we are both writers and have shared our writing since my first poems when I was seven.

I can’t talk to him anymore or write with him anymore, but I do have his writings and our conversations from the past to engage. For me, grieving has included meditation on his life, philosophy, and theology and on my life, philosophy, and theology. My dad was, as he put it, a devout, fallen-away Catholic. He was also my greatest cheerleader as I found and engaged humanist communities and discovered ways to practice humanism for social justice and in interbelief encounters and contexts. He believed that all people are people, and if we could all just figure out how to act that truth, the world would be an infinitely better place. Working from a place of the equality of all people is what I believe is at the heart of humanism, which is why I always told him that if I am a secular humanist, he was a devout, fallen-away Catholic humanist.

One of the things I most admire about him is his radical acceptance of people on their own terms. It’s something I strive for in my life, but particularly when it comes to spaces where I participate as a majority voice and in interbelief contexts. The hardest part of interbelief practice for me is finding space for relationship with people from proselytizing traditions. I believe that it is their right to spread their beliefs. I also have a right not to be pestered or judged or hated for mine. (Two people have seen this time of grief as an opportunity to invite me to their churches, and I am not okay with that.) I also believe there is a just way for us to live in community together, but I haven’t particularly found that yet. In my heart, I believe that radical acceptance of people on their own terms is where to start.

Death might be the hardest aspect of life for a secular humanist. There is not a belief in an afterlife where a person’s soul exists in any tangible or cohesive way. For me, the afterlife is how that person’s impact lives on in the world—in the ripples that person’s life spreads into the world. One of the best ways I can deal with my dad’s absence from my life is to appreciate the good that emanated from him and to work to incorporate the ways he brought kindness, love, and justice to the world to the rest of my time in the world. I think it might be possible to sum up my dad’s philosophy as just, peaceful caring. We could all use a little more just, peaceful caring.