The reliquary

What are the relics in your life?
  he asked in a much loved sermon
  that no one I’ve asked 
  seems to remember
  
 The old ladies chortled
   while shaking his hand
   I think *I* am the relic
   deepest truth, deepest pain
   smoothed with commiseration
  
 His point was that relics become
   gods themselves
 That times past
  idealized in selective memory
  cannot be the objects of our yearning
 That people passed
  must be grieved
  not deified
  
 That in grief we keep
  their memory
  their once-presence
  from becoming a trap
  of now-imagined expectations
  without the possibility of tangible check
  
 Will you love me even if I don’t succeed?
 If you don’t understand me, am I Understood?
  
 In grief we let our precious ones be human
  temporary
  serendipitous
  ephemeral assemblies of smallest bits
  divine and destructible

  We return ourselves
  terrifyingly
  and with merciful, ocean-cold relief
  to our own ephemerality
   to the depth from which the reliquary arises
  and will necessarily fall again