Who Do You Tell When a Chapter Ends?

I recently heard about an old tradition called “telling the bees.”

For centuries, in parts of Europe and later America, when someone in a household died, a family member would go out to the beehive and tell the bees what had happened.

Sometimes the hives were draped in black cloth.

Sometimes the bees were told the name of the person who had died.

In some traditions, they were even symbolically invited to the funeral.

At first, it sounded like one of those curious customs from another time.

But the more I thought about it, the less strange it seemed.

Because maybe telling the bees wasn't really for the bees.

Maybe it was for us.

Humans have always created rituals to mark the significant passages of life.

Births.

Marriages.

Deaths.

Coming of age.

Rituals create a line between before and after.

They give us permission to stop - even briefly - and acknowledge:

Something has changed.

But so many of the transitions we experience today don't come with rituals.

You leave a company after twenty years.

You retire.

Your children leave home.

A friendship ends.

You move away from a place you loved.

You lose someone important to you.

Or perhaps you simply wake up one day and realize that a chapter of your life has quietly come to an end.

And what do we often do?

We keep moving.

We update the résumé.

Pack the boxes.

Make the plans.

Fill the calendar.

Start figuring out what's next.

There is certainly something to be said for moving forward.

But perhaps there is also something to be said for marking the moment before we do.

Because endings are complicated.

Even endings we choose.

There may be things we're relieved to leave behind and things we'll miss more than we expected.

Things to grieve.

Things to celebrate.

Things to forgive.

Things to thank.

Things to release.

And things we want to carry with us.

Maybe that's what rituals give us: a moment to decide what belongs to the chapter that is closing - and what belongs to the person we are becoming.

I've been thinking about three questions:

What am I grateful for?

What am I grieving?

What do I want to carry with me?

They are simple questions.

But I wonder how differently we might move into our next chapters if we took the time to answer them.

Not every ending needs a ceremony.

And most of us probably don't have a beehive waiting in the backyard.

But maybe the people who practiced this strange and beautiful tradition understood something we sometimes forget:

An ending deserves to be acknowledged before we rush into the beginning.

So the next time a chapter of your life comes to an end, perhaps don't be quite so quick to ask:

What's next?

Stop for a moment.

Look back.

Acknowledge what was.

Decide what you're taking with you.

And in whatever way makes sense to you - 

tell the bees.