The Church prays for those who have died because love does not end at death. In the daily evening prayers and at every Divine Liturgy the departed are remembered by name, and families give the priest the names of their dead to be prayed for.
After a death the Church keeps particular days. A memorial service, called the Panikhida in Slavonic and the Mnemosyno in Greek, is served on the third, ninth and fortieth days, a custom recorded as early as the Apostolic Constitutions, and again when a year has passed. It is a short service of psalms, hymns and prayers asking God to give rest to the soul of His servant, and it ends with the slow and solemn singing of "Memory Eternal".
Families often bring koliva to the memorial: boiled wheat sweetened and mixed with seeds, nuts and spices, blessed in the service. The grain that is buried and rises speaks of the resurrection of the dead. Through the year the Church keeps Memorial Saturdays for all the departed (five in the Slavic tradition), and in many places, in the days after Pascha, the faithful visit and bless the graves of their loved ones.