Grief

I read an article from Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper the other day about our young adults - the 20-somethings in our world and how they are not doing so well. It's called a crisis of connection. Here's another article about parents worried about their children I found while searching for that. All this mental health crisis is creating its own sense of loss and adversity. So we look for causes and try to diagnose what exactly is happening here. Of course, I think the first thing I reach for is blaming the pandemic. I admit there are so many other factors, including screen time and social media, but in my mind the biggest culprit seems to be the pandemic. For obvious reasons, it was a horrific time in our world. Deaths, sickness, masking, staying home, locking down, wiping everything, not trusting anything, the list goes on and on. And there was nothing we could do. 

But I think there is something we can do now, in fact, something we must do in order to heal. We can grieve. The beautiful thing that religions offer are the rituals we use to define circumstances in life. When there's a wedding, a birth, a coming-of-age, we celebrate with rituals and traditions that are tried and true. We gather as a community to bring everyone together to pray and bless and cheer you on. The same is true for sickness and death. We have a ritual to pray and bless and prepare you. We have the anointing of the sick, a beautiful ritual when someone faces a health crisis. We have the burial mass or memorial services to support the family who has lost a loved one. We give eulogies for those who we remember and we focus on the good and beautiful in them. But we have all been through a crisis now. I wish there were a community ritual of grieving for what has been lost these last few years. 

I imagine what my own would be, and what my children's would be. I imagine a communal eulogy for everything that was taken away. Kelly Corrigan has made a beautiful podcast called "Thanks for Being Here." I think it helps us to look at a life that was lived and wonder about the person and appreciate all they had to offer. We could do the same for what we are missing now. A eulogy for the lost senior year. For the lost junior prom. For the lost trip. For the lost community of school. For the lost goodbye to our classmates. For the lost job interview. For the lost parties and graduations and first communions and baptisms and funerals. For the lost opportunity. For the lost minutes together. For the lost loved one in the nursing home. Will we ever get those images out of our minds? For the lost walks in the park. For the lost... Will we ever get over the grief? I think the only way forward is to look back and talk about it and then actively grieve it. And eulogize it. 

I heard a little tidbit yesterday about our society's collective trauma from Esther Perel. We are coping the way we know how, she said. I heard a similar thing from something I read a while ago. (I'm sorry I don't remember or I would give credit.) When the hospice nurse came to meet a family, they said to her, "We don't know what to do." And her reply was, "Well, how would you?" We don't know how to help our kids or our world right now. There aren't any easy answers. But I think that during Lent, when we think about the ashes in our lives, the ashes left from the pandemic, we can take a day or a moment to look back and grieve. Grieve with your children. Grieve with your loved ones. Grieve with your friends. Just over a cup of tea or an afternoon snack. And I think that will help to heal us. Or at least make the load a little more bearable.

I wish you a moment of grief today so that you too can heal.