Forgiving the Dead
Some of the people we most need to forgive are no longer available to be approached. The work of forgiving the dead has its own shape and asks something different of the one who carries the wound.
One of the hardest situations in the work of forgiveness is the one in which the wrongdoer is no longer alive. The conversation that might have repaired the harm cannot happen. The apology, if it was going to come, did not come and now never will. The wronged party is left with the wound and with no addressable other.
This situation is not exotic. It is the situation many adult children find themselves in with a parent who died without addressing the harm they caused. It is the situation of those whose partner died with the rupture between them unresolved. It is the situation of those whose abuser was someone they will never see again. The death of the wrongdoer does not lift the wound. In some cases it deepens it, because the possibility of repair — even the remote possibility — is now permanently foreclosed.
The traditions that address this most directly tend to make several moves. The first is to refuse the picture of forgiveness as transactional. If the wronged party can only forgive when the wrongdoer has done the work of asking, then forgiveness is unavailable here. The wrongdoer cannot now do the work. But the wound is here, and the wronged party is still alive. Some non-transactional account of forgiveness is required, and the traditions that have worked with grief have developed one.
The shape of the work is this. The wronged party does the truth-telling that the wrongdoer should have done, on the wrongdoer's behalf. Not because they owe the wrongdoer this favor, but because the truth itself is owed, and someone has to say it. The wronged party writes out, in full and unflinching language, what was actually done. They do not soften it. They do not let the dead off by virtue of their being dead. The truth-telling can be addressed to no one in particular, or it can be addressed to the dead person by name and kept in a sealed letter that no one else will read.
The second move is to allow the grief and the anger to coexist. Grief alone, without permission for the anger, becomes a kind of falsification. The wronged party who is grieving a parent who harmed them is grieving the parent and they are also angry at the parent, and the anger does not dishonor the grief. The two are not in competition. The traditions that work well with grief make explicit space for the ambivalence — the love and the rage in the same hand, neither one canceling the other.
The third move is to find the form of release that does not require the wrongdoer's participation. Several traditions have ritualized forms for this. The Jewish tradition has Yizkor — a memorial liturgy that names the dead and includes language for the complicated dead. The Catholic tradition has prayers for the dead that are not limited to the well-beloved. The Buddhist tradition has dedication-of-merit practices that can be offered toward the dead without requiring sentiment. These ritual forms give the wronged party something to do, and the doing matters. Forgiveness of the dead is rarely accomplished in pure thought. It is accomplished in repeated small actions.
For the wronged party with no inherited ritual to draw on, smaller forms can be invented. Writing a letter and burning it. Visiting the place where the person is buried and saying what was never said. Speaking the dead person's name aloud in the company of one trusted listener. The form is less important than the structure of doing-something. The wound is not released in pure reflection. It is released through some act that marks the work as done.
What does not work, in this situation, is pretending the wrong has been resolved by the simple fact of the wrongdoer's death. The death changes the conditions of the relationship. It does not, by itself, repair the wound. The wronged party who imagines they can simply skip the work because there is no longer anyone to address it usually discovers, months or years later, that the wound is still in their body. The work was waiting for them. The wrongdoer's absence did not erase it.
There is one further nuance. Forgiveness of the dead is sometimes complete, in the sense that the wronged party feels the weight lift and does not have to revisit the work. More often, it is partial and recursive. The grief returns. The anger returns. The ritual is done again. This is not a failure of the work. It is the ordinary shape of carrying something across a life. The dead are not finished with the living, and the living are not finished with the dead. The work continues, in lighter and lighter rounds, for as long as memory holds.