A Grief Too Big To Bear Alone

“All pain can be borne if it can be shared.” The philosopher Schopenhauer is credited with that quote. The “pain” on my mind, as I write this, is that of not being able to grieve for your dead, to communally share that loss. We might not be a society that focuses on death as the Victorians did, but we do desire to give our loved ones a decent burial. We wish to gather at the hour of their last breath and hold their hands. We wish to dress them and lay them out in a funeral home surrounded by friends and relatives, remembering the lives they lived. The pandemic took all of that from us.
We were not allowed to touch our loved ones let alone be in the same room as they drew that last breath. Funeral gatherings were prohibited and even worse, when funeral homes ran out of space to process the bodies, they were stacked like meat in refrigerated trucks. And for those who had no relatives or friends to claim the body, it was placed in a box and then buried in an unmarked grave. As the pandemic wore on, as the deaths mounted daily, it was impossible to avoid hearing of these reports on social media, internet news sites, and nightly news telecasts. People were crying “For God’s sake let us give our loved ones a decent burial.” COVID-19 would not let that be.
I lost no one to the virus but these reports disturbed me. Then came the George Floyd murder and the unleashing of the masses in protest. These people, myself included, were angry that something like this could happen in America. The protesters and even the governors who had passed all those “executive orders” banning gatherings, said yes, go out and protest. But it wasn’t until I read an article I had saved, written in October 2019 before the pandemic, that made me see these protests from another angle. George Floyd had died and he was not going to go to his grave unnoticed! He was going to be remembered by thousands, here and all across the globe.
The article I reread this morning talked about this need to share grief, only than can it be bearable. It also went on to discuss that we need new rituals because nobody has ever lived in this kind of world before. It was as if Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, the author (The Last Word, Creating a space for our brokenness, Catholic Herald, Oct 4, 2019), was given a view of the world 3 months hence! All of these protests had become one big communal funeral procession! Day after day, a new form of the “wake” was taking place. And this wake would continue well after his televised funeral, well after his interment was completed!
Many of the interviewed protesters mentioned their own personal losses to police violence. Some even alluded to a deeper running grief over old personal losses that they now saw reflected in this death. The pandemic had denied a basic human way to mourn, and now this murder of an innocent black man gave them a way to process, to share grief once again.
It is often said that God, or the Universe, works in mysterious ways. George Floyd was one man among the many black men and women murdered throughout recent history. But he didn’t die in vain. His death came at a pivotal time. It not only gave rise to this country finally seeing and starting to rectify all of the social injustices against non-whites but it also freed us to come together without the fear of a virus standing between us. A time to grieve collectively was the gift George gave us. And a way to grieve that deals with the fact that today’s society mostly leaves us alone with our brokenness. “We are pioneers in new territory, and pioneers have to improvise…” Rolheiser wrote. Indeed, the world will never be the same, and neither will the way in which we mourn our loved ones. One thing is certain, we will not do it via Facebook or Zoom as here can be nothing “virtual” about it… As humans we must come together, virus be damned!

Reflections on current events

Here are two cartoons that comment on the state of our legal world:

“Slow Justice” (someone forwarded this to me so I don’t know who created it)…quite appropriate, don’t you think, in relation to racial injustice in this nation.

This one came from a newspaper years ago. Just thought it reflects on the state of our government’s concerns with legal matters these days

Just 3 Little Words

I Can’t Breathe

Breathing is what keeps us alive. Cease to breathe within 5 minutes your brain dies from lack of oxygen. In yoga, breathe in, breathe out, prana goes up and down your charkas with each deep full breath. Put your hands around a person’s wind pipe, cut off their ability to breathe, death ensues.
The chant of George Floyd, his last words, rings out through the canyons of our cities Voices everywhere taking it on as the mantra of 2020. It is an exhaling of frustrations, of anger, of pain. The world is listening, these three small words, they will make a big difference in the days, months, and years to come.
As these words pound through my TV and computer’s speakers I can’t help but think of other meanings they have. Ironic meanings, surreal meanings, that only in this time of the Covid-19 pandemic could such a phrase mean so much in our lives.
At the beginning of the pandemic people were dying because they couldn’t breathe. Lungs were unable to do their jobs. So we learned about ventilators, those miracle machines that breathe for a person. The rallying cry of pandemic ravished states across the nation became “we need ventilators so that the sick can breathe”.
Three plus months into the pandemic the cases and death rates have fallen. But we can’t breathe a sigh of relief yet. It’s not over until either a miracle from God or a vaccine arrives. So we do social distancing and wear our protective masks and stay home as much as possible.
Masks…we are ordered to wear them when in public or entering a place of business. Yes, they are what protects us from spreading the virus to others. But for some of us, it’s like someone holding a hand over your mouth and nose and you just can’t breathe! I have asthma and it doesn’t matter what the mask is made out of, after 15 minutes I start choking for lack of fresh air.
Also all this “sheltering in place”, this extended isolation smothered us psychologically. Connecting with fellow humans in real time, touching one another, denial of this human necessity is akin to wrapping a person in a plastic bag (a body bag for a dead soul?). It’s denying the social breath of being human! From those months of holding one’s breath as to when things will return to normal came the great exhaling when Floyd was murdered. Why do you think thousands of people stopped being afraid of the virus and rushed into the streets? The social necessity of standing up for what was right, outweighed the chance of being infected. Social injustice was not going to smother us any more…
So what’s in the meaning of these words? Let’s examine each one: I…not just me but the larger I of all of us together…Can’t…stating it’s impossible, unable to do, an impediment sits in front of movement…Breathe…in and out, inhale life giving oxygen, we all do it, every creature on this planet does it. We now must join spiritual hands and breathe together, pray that the ’t will vanish and the WE come out of this horrible time alive…WE CAN BREATHE again. We Can change the world.

America is Burning

This poem was inspired by Billy Joel’s When the Lights Went Out On Broadway

Downtowns never reopened
Even though the virus had gone away.
The mobs looted and pillaged stores
Insurrection was here to stay.
–
Disney World was to set to open
Until the sky turned a bright red
From the flames of an angry nation
Mourning another black man dead.
–
The lights went out on Broadway
For all who didn’t stand a chance
Against senseless police violence
And the bogus legality dance.
–
I stood across in Jersey
Watched Manhattan’s skyline fall
As our governors begged the rioters
To cease looting and end it all.
–
America is burning
To whom do we lay the blame?
After months of fear and quarantine
Is rage and anger the only game?
–
The lights went out in Washington
The white house burned to the ground
The president fled to Florida
Where now he couldn’t be found.