Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
--Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day" (1992)
This is the anatomy of remembering in the context of November. The date for the Transgender Day of Remembrance was chosen because Rita Hester was murdered in November. In a sense, it is an arbitrary date, but it occurs in a month when death and dying are so visible in nature, when darkness comes too early. It occurs in a month full of and surrounded by relevant observances and seasons: All Saints and All Souls, when we remember the dead; Thanksgiving, when we express gratitude; Advent, when some of us anticipate Word-made-flesh.
Every year we gather on or near Nov. 20 and honor our siblings whose lives have been taken by anti-trans violence. When we meet on this occasion, we remember our dead taken not by disease or natural causes, not by accident or age, but by violence. We name our dead, and we name the hate that killed them. Even though we despise this service and our need to hold it, we come. We come to say their names and talk about why they died, and how. We try to touch both our grief and our anger. We try to resist fatigue -- so many names, so much hate -- to resist apathy and shutting down in the face of the horror.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-miller-jen-hoffman/transgender-day-of-remembrance_b_4304629.html
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