Learning to Lament

from 12.22.20

One of the most devastating testaments to human history is the mass grave. Each time I read about the creation or discovery of these unnamed human deposits, I am seized by a sharp sense of loss. The tragedy of these graves is not only that souls have been taken but that they cannot be remembered. They cannot be mourned as individuals who were known, but only as strangers, figments of people. They cannot be resurrected in our hearts and minds. They are truly and finally gone.

As we approach the close of this long, wearisome year, I can’t help but feel that our innumerable tragedies have been blurred together, that we have heaped high our loss and devastation and walked away without claiming any of the fallen as our own. I don’t generally believe it is healthy to keep an inventory of sadness and disappointment, but in a period of global calamity when we have necessarily adopted a “stay strong and carry on” mindset, I fear we have failed to mourn things worth mourning.

Before saying much else, I should draw an essential distinction. Grief is pain that we experience, and therefore grieving is often involuntary. Mourning, however, is choosing this pain, whether it be our own or someone else’s. And as beings averse to suffering, this is not a choice we’re used to making.

We do not possess a sufficient mechanism for mourning, privately or collectively. This is because we don’t consider mourning a necessary discipline. Volumes have been written on the stages of grief and the road to healing, but we speak about these journeys as trials that must be endured, a means to an end. We never talk about choosing grief, about deciding to reckon with our pain and our mistakes.

I think we avoid personal mourning because we’re scared. We’ve been told it’s dangerous, that grief can swallow a person. And certainly this is true. But I believe the risk has to do with our means of mourning and not with the practice itself. Destructive mourning is engaging grief without hope. It is using pain as a drug or a stimulus rather than a means of growth. But there is a way to walk through the tunnel while keeping your eyes fixed on the light. There is a way to honor your pain without becoming defined by it.

I believe we avoid collective mourning because we are selfish. Choosing to share in other people’s pain demands that we acknowledge our responsibility to each other. We know instinctively that we are responsible to grieve with those we love, but what about mourning the suffering of the world? We do not want to believe that we are responsible to our fellow man because acknowledging that kind of responsibility would inhibit our freedom and destroy our comfort. And yet we are compelled to recognize a fundamental reality: we are not merely strangers sharing a planet; we are bound together as a human family. And the well-being of our family depends upon the well-being of each member.

Perhaps it’s the recognition of this mutual responsibility that riddles my mind with questions. How can we walk away from the anguish of this moment? How can we turn away from a field of graves without planting crosses? Do we have a plan to pause and recount all that’s been lost? In this season when our lives are consumed with anticipation, will we make equal room for agonizing remembrance?

I believe we must, for several reasons. First, mourning bestows significance because it requires sacrifice. It is choosing pain on behalf of someone or something else. Jesus demonstrates this principle in one of the most beautiful passages of the Bible. In John 11, Jesus travels to the village of Bethany, where his friend Lazarus has recently died. When he arrives he finds Lazarus’s sisters, Mary and Martha, grieving. Interestingly, they both make the same accusation: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!” (CSB) Verse 33 follows: “When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled.” He asks to see Lazarus’s tomb, and when they show him the way, John records, Jesus weeps.

Jesus knows that he is about to resurrect Lazarus. Before he even left for Bethany, he said, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I’m on my way to wake him up.” And yet he weeps. He chooses to validate Mary and Martha’s sorrow even though it will be taken away momentarily. He confers significance on Lazarus’s death even though he is about to restore his life. The effect is clear. The onlookers say, “See how he loved him!”

Second, mourning precipitates generosity. As I said earlier, we cannot mourn for others until we have recognized our responsibility to them. But once we have acknowledged our responsibility, we cannot simply lament people’s suffering. We must also serve their needs. This is the nature of authentic mourning: if we have truly shared another person’s pain, then we will make necessary sacrifices to provide healing.

Third, mourning reminds us that our pain matters, that it is a crucial part of who we are becoming. Mourning is giving ourselves permission to be changed by our pain. It is allowing ourselves to remain hollow in the places where something precious has been taken away. When we fail to mourn, we act as if our pain has no lasting effect, as if anything or anyone could fill the space vacated by another. But we know this is not true. We know that pain leaves permanent scars. We make a habit of celebrating happiness and achievement, but if pain is every bit as formative, every bit as valuable, why do we not make time to mourn?

Finally, mourning is a form of remembrance. It is not an accidental recollection or a lingering fragment of an otherwise forgotten song. It is intentional and thorough. It is recalling how a person carried himself, how he spoke, how he made you feel. It is retracing how a dream was born, why it was important, how it changed you. And in some mysterious way, remembrance lends a second life to things we believed dead. It preserves them from fading away and being forgotten.

One of my favorite Disney movies is Coco. The saddest scene in the movie is when Hector watches his old friend Chicharrón fade away from the Land of the Dead because no one remembers him in the Land of the Living. When Miguel asks where he has gone, Hector explains, “He’s been forgotten. When there is no one left in the living world who remembers you, you disappear from this world. We call it the final death.” And perhaps this is why I’m so scared of moving on from 2020 without taking time to mourn. What happens to the memory of all who’ve been lost if we do not remember? What happens to those who are grieving if we do not comfort them? What happens to their pain if it is never acknowledged?

At the beginning of the year, as I watched the world begin to unravel and losses start to multiply, I expected that we would have a day of reckoning. That when the tragedy finally ended, we would take time to mourn before rebuilding our lives. But the tragedy hasn’t ended, and there has been no season of mourning. In fact, it seems that as much as possible, everyone is moving on with life as usual — I feel myself moving on with life as usual. And I am alarmed. Are we really going to let this year lapse into the next without grieving for what’s been lost? Was it all worth so little?

I realize that pressing on toward the future is necessary and that hope is its own kind of homage to the lost. I know there are people striving valiantly just to survive, and their struggle is noble. But survival instincts have not kept us from mourning. We’ve been kept from lament by age-old saboteurs.

Excessive loss is numbing, and 2020 has been nothing if not excessive. This is the insidious nature of wars, famines, and pandemics — they do not merely steal the things we love; they rob us of the capacity to feel loss. Stalin, a man responsible for innumerable mass graves, understood this well. He is famous for saying “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” 2020 illustrates this reality perfectly. When Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash in January, people mourned him for weeks, as they were right to do. But no one has taken care to mourn the 1.7 million people who have died from COVID-19. Instead, people litter their feeds with pandemic memes, which are funny and refreshing but altogether inappropriate if we’ve lost sight of the true toll this virus has taken.

Another damaging trend I’ve seen on social media is the game of comparisons, which frankly I find sickening. A classic argument goes like this: “50 million people died of the Spanish Flu. Only 1.7 million people have died from COVID-19, which is a substantially smaller percentage of the world population. Why are we making such a big deal about it?” The simple answer is because it is a big deal. 1. 7 million deaths is always a big deal. Comparing tragedies to minimize the significance of one is simply inhumane. There is no scale of tragic value — tragedy is a fixed condition because it is based on the sanctity of human life.

I suspect we’ve begun comparing tragedies because we started comparing ideologies. Politicizing a catastrophe is one of the easiest ways to forget the human cost of it, and more than ever before, it seems we are prepared to wage wars of secondary importance. Our human concerns have been replaced by political interests, and we have become consumed with national policy while failing to consider our personal responsibility. We’ve fueled arguments of ignorance while ignoring the tragedy that is certain. We’ve become warriors instead of healers, crusaders instead of care-givers, and I can’t help but think our words are meaningless to those we’ve abandoned in their grief.

Finally, and perhaps the most subtle, is the temptation of escapism. Honestly, nothing has seemed so alluring (and harmless) this year as a retreat from reality. In fact, escapism has become the marketing strategy for the most cunning brands. And the surprising thing is that most aren’t even selling a fantasy; they’re simply promising a sense of normalcy. Certainly a respite is necessary at times — this is why we write stories and build summer cottages. But if we can no longer meet the need of the world, then our sanctuaries have become crippling instead of empowering. So I want to call us back to the violence of the moment, to untempered reality, to necessary remembrance.

As I gaze across the ruin of this year, I see all the shallow graves where I haven’t wept and all the charred debris that I never bothered to revisit. But more haunting, if I turn and strain my eyes toward the horizon, I see a future where none of it is remembered. So before I go any further, I am going to turn back and plant roses in the rubble, and I am going to gather the embers and let them burn against my body. Come with me . . .

. . . . .

I choose to remember the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. Elijah McClain. George Floyd.

I mourn for their families who are still waiting to receive justice. Who everyday see their smiles and remember their potential but can never again hold them in their arms.

I lament a society that propagates violence against persons of color. A society where people must take to the streets to remind us their lives matter. A society that in every way has betrayed, subjugated, and dehumanized people made in God’s own image.

I choose to grieve for the 1.7 million souls who have been taken from us by COVID-19. I think how so many of them were forced to die alone, unable to clutch the hand of a spouse or gaze into the eyes of their children. I am overwhelmed by the fact that my family will be together this Christmas but so many will forever have an empty seat at their dinner tables.

I ache for healthcare workers who daily watched these people die. Whose best was not enough. Who had to forsake their own families in order to save others. Who must be haunted by the shadow of death.

I mourn for the elderly, isolated in nursing homes, who have not felt the embrace of a loved one all year. I think how they must feel time slipping away, and with it their hopes of ever experiencing freedom again. I worry that they feel forgotten, and I wonder if anyone will ease their loneliness on Christmas Day.

I grieve for canceled graduations, stolen weddings, and thwarted family vacations. For the inability to honor an achievement, celebrate love, and find togetherness.

I lament the loss of presence. All the many hours that we had planned to spend together that we spent alone instead.

I mourn that choosing to spend time with each other is always a complicated decision. That a hug is a risk and a handshake can cause regret.

I hurt for those who cannot go home this Christmas.

I grieve that young children are growing up in a world where they cannot read the expressions of strangers. Where they must cover their own precious faces. Where they cannot hug their friends.

I remember those who lost their livelihoods this year. Who worked hard and built their impossible dreams into something tangible only to have them swept away.

I fear for the poor and vulnerable of the world whose plight has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Whose needs have gone unmet and overlooked. For those who have suffered neglect and abuse. For the ones in isolation tortured by their own minds.

I mourn for those whose private sadness and disappointment have been overshadowed by the world’s trouble. For those who were never met in their hurt.

And perhaps most of all, I lament our inability to show kindness and understanding. I grieve that tribulation has revealed anger and selfishness. That more than ever we seem incapable of listening to those we disagree with and unwilling to surrender our rights on behalf of another. That for all our doctrine and ideals, we have not found a way to live at peace with our neighbor.

. . . . .

After calling us to mourn, I would be remiss if I didn’t invite us to hope. We don’t usually consider these activities compatible, but they exist in necessary tension. Mourning reminds us that we need hope; hope keeps our mourning from turning to defeat.

I find my hope in someone who knows all my pain and sadness. Isaiah 53:3 says, “He [Christ] was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; he was despised, and we didn’t value him.”

One of my favorite names for Jesus is Emmanuel, meaning “God with us.” This is what we celebrate at Christmas: that Jesus willingly entered our broken world and shared our pain. But he did more than taste our suffering — he met our deepest need. Isaiah 53:4–5 says, “Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds.” By dying for our sins, Jesus provided a way for us to be restored to God. And this is the hope that rises above any circumstance: that we can belong to a God who sustains the world and has promised to one day redeem it.

“Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.” Revelation 21:3–4