Mourning

Rabbi Sharon Brous writes about an ancient Jewish practice from Second Temple Judaism:

Several times each year, hundreds of thousands of Jews would ascend to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and political life. They would climb the steps of the Temple Mount and enter its enormous plaza, turning to the right en masse, circling counterclockwise.

Meanwhile, the brokenhearted, the mourners (and here I would also include the lonely and the sick), would make this same ritual walk but they would turn to the left and circle in the opposite direction: every step against the current.

And each person who encountered someone in pain would look into that person’s eyes and inquire: “What happened to you? Why does your heart ache?”

“Because I am a mourner,” a person might say. “My father died,” another person might say. “There are so many things I never got to say to him.” Or perhaps: “My partner left. I was completely blindsided.”

Those who walked from the right would offer a blessing: “May the Holy One comfort you,” they would say. “You are not alone.” And then they would continue to walk until the next person approached.

This timeless wisdom speaks to what it means to be human in a world of pain. This year, you walk the path of the anguished. Perhaps next year, it will be me. I hold your broken heart knowing that one day you will hold mine.

Editor’s Note: You can read the original from Mishnah Middot 2.2 here.

In his article for The Atlantic, David Brooks says that recently he’s been obsessed with the following two questions:

The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. But other statistics are similarly troubling. The percentage of people who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990. The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren’t married or living with a romantic partner went up to 38 percent in 2019, from 29 percent in 1990. A record-high 25 percent of 40-year-old Americans have never married. More than half of all Americans say that no one knows them well. The percentage of high-school students who report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” shot up from 26 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2021.

My second, related question is: Why have Americans become so mean? I was recently talking with a restaurant owner who said that he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told me that many on her staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive. At the far extreme of meanness, hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. Murder rates have been surging, at least until recently. Same with gun sales. Social trust is plummeting. In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave to charity; in 2018, fewer than half did. The words that define our age reek of menace: conspiracy, polarization, mass shootings, trauma, safe spaces.

Brooks concludes: “We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy.”

In Wendell Berry’s novel Hannah Coulter, the main character, Hannah, is grieving the death of her first husband, who died in World War II. She offers the following reflection on grief and how we often deal with it:

I don’t think grief is something we get over or get away from. ... It is around us and in us all the time, and we know it. We know that every night … There are people lying awake grieving, and every morning there are people waking up to absences that never will be filled. But we shut our mouth and go ahead. How we are is fine. There are always a few who will recite their complaints, but the proper answer to “how are you” is fine.

The thing that you have most dreaded has happened at last. The worst thing that you might’ve expected has happened, and you didn’t expect it. You have grown old and ill, and most of those you have loved or dead or gone away. Even so: how are you? Fine. How are you? Fine.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Grief; Sorrow; Church —The presence of Jesus and the presence of his church are the two places where it’s okay to not be “fine.” We can bring our griefs to our Savior and to his people. Future; Heaven – We can patiently endure our current troubles because we are secure in the fact that a better world is coming, where we will have eternal peace, joy, and fellowship.

For over half a century, the voice of Oswald Laurence was heard on the Underground Transit System in London. He made a simple but needed public safety announcement, warning passengers to "Mind the gap."

When Oswald passed away in 2007, his widow Margret felt heartbroken and alone. She missed Oswald's love and zest for life. To ease her pain, Margret would visit the Embankment Station, sit on the platform, and listen to her beloved husband's voice saying, “Mind the gap.” Then, one day in September 2012, she sat down, and his voice was gone.

In modernizing their systems, the London Underground officials had replaced Oswald's voice with an electronic recording. Margret was distressed by the change and requested a copy of Oswald's recording, so she could listen to it at home.

When the London Underground staff learned of Margret's story, they were moved by an extraordinary act of compassion and kindness. The staff got past all the red tape, searched through the archives until they found Oswald’s recording, and then had it digitized. It was also decided to continue with Oswald’s recording at the stop nearest to Margret's home. Today, if you find yourself at the Embankment Station on the Northern Line of the London Underground, you will still hear the 1950 recording of Oswald Laurence's voice.

Has that message saved lives? Who knows? But has that message touched at least one life? Absolutely. In fact, that’s why it’s still there. One act of kindness can change a life!

You can watch the short video and hear Oswald’s voice here.

When Ian and Michelle Horne got married, he wore a purple tie on their wedding day because it was her favorite color. Then came the pandemic.

In fall of 2020, after a long battle, Michelle died from complications caused by COVID-19. But not long after his wife's death, Ian wondered if Michelle was still speaking to him.

He was driving to his job as a local radio DJ in the predawn darkness when he spotted something odd. About two dozen streetlights flanking the highway had turned purple. They looked like a lavender string of pearls glowing in the night sky.

Ian took it as a sign. He said, "Michelle knew that was my route to work that I take every morning and was the route she took on her final drive to the hospital. I remember simply smiling and feeling overwhelmed with the idea that Michelle was close."

The coronavirus pandemic has now killed more than 600,000 Americans. Many never had a chance to hug or say farewell to loved ones who died alone and isolated in hospital wards. But there is another group of pandemic survivors who say they have been granted a second chance to say goodbye. They are people like Horne who believe they've been contacted by a loved one who died from coronavirus.

These experiences can be subtle: relatives appearing in hyper-real dreams, or a sudden whiff of fragrance worn by a departed loved one. Other encounters are more dramatic: feeling a touch on your shoulder at night, or seeing the full-bodied form of a recently departed relative appear at the foot of your bed.

These stories may sound implausible, but they are in fact part of a historical pattern. Whenever there is a massive tragedy such as a pandemic, a war, or a natural disaster, there is a corresponding surge in reports of people seeing the dead or trying to contact them.

The 1918 influenza epidemic sparked a "spiritualism craze" as Americans turned to seances and Ouija boards to contact departed loved ones. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks came a wave of people reporting sightings of and even conversations with those who had been snatched from their lives.

These experiences are so common in the psychological field that there is a name for them: ADCs, or "after death communications." Research suggests at least 60 million Americans have these experiences, and that they occur across cultures, religious beliefs, ethnicities, and income levels.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is natural to mourn the tragic loss of a loved one and to need time to adjust to their absence. Our emotions can powerfully affect us in such cases. However, we need to put our faith and trust in Christ who holds the keys to life and death. Only he can comfort us and we should depend only on his promises of life after death and reunification with loved ones (John 11:25-26; 1 Thess. 4:13-18).

Sara Pascucci received a letter in the mail on Febuary 3 scolding her for still having Christmas decorations up. The anonymous letter read: “Take your Christmas lights down! It’s Valentine’s Day!!!!!!” While the letter would have upset her in normal circumstances, Pascucci said, it hit especially hard now. She lost both her father and her aunt to COVID-19 less than one week apart.

Her father, who lived with her, put up the Christmas decorations immediately after Thanksgiving—as he did every year. In the weeks following his death on Jan. 15, Pascucci couldn’t bring herself to take the decorations down. Receiving the harsh letter, she said, was “… a major blow to the heart. No one really knows what is going on inside the house or why we didn’t take down the decorations.”

She shared the letter in the Long Island Moms Facebook group and explained why it was particularly painful, in the hopes that the anonymous sender might see her post. She wrote, “The family has been preoccupied with funeral arrangements, mortgage/utility payments, and just the grieving process of it all. So yes, we haven’t gotten around to taking down his Christmas decorations. Be kind to people because you never know what they are going through.”

The community was outraged on her behalf. Within minutes of her sharing the post, dozens of messages flooded Pascucci’s Facebook inbox. Neighbors sent the Pascucci family heartfelt cards, flowers, meals, and a GoFundMe page was created to help cover mounting mortgage payments and funeral costs.

Beyond the private acts of kindness, what struck Pascucci the most, she said, is that many neighbors started to put their own holiday decorations back up so she wouldn’t feel so alone. Bethpage residents climbed up to their attics and down to their basements to retrieve the decorations they had already stored away for the season. In early February, they redecorated their homes for Christmas.

Although the holiday season is long past, twinkly lights and festive ornaments recently reappeared on the streets of Bethpage, in a show of support for a grieving neighbor.

In an interview, actor Keanu Reeves, star of the ultra-violent action thriller John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, offered a nugget of insight into why his portrayal continues to strike a chord with audiences.

In the films, John Wick is an expert assassin whose murderous rampage is triggered by the murder of his dog while he was deep in the throes of grief over the losing his wife. Reeves explains, “With any character, you have the role on the page, you have the vision of the director and you have your life experience.”

When the interviewer probes further, he elaborates. “Well, for the character and in life, it’s about the love of the person you’re grieving for, and any time you can keep company with that fire, it is warm. I absolutely relate to that, and I don’t think you ever work through it. Grief and loss, those are things that don’t ever go away. They stay with you.”

The grief in question stems from the loss of Reeves’ daughter Ava, tragically stillborn, and his girlfriend Jennifer Syme, who perished in a tragic auto accident two years later. “It’s always with you … like an ebb and flow.”

Potential Preaching Angle: God cares about our grief and our loss, it’s not something to be ashamed of or gloss over. It is a stage of life that impacts us as we move forward.

Five years after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by George Zimmerman in 2012, Time magazine interviewed his parents, Sybrina and Tracy, who wrote a book about their ordeal, Rest in Power. The Martins told Time that they wrote their story to "encourage another family that has gone through the loss of a child." Trayvon's father Tracy shares that he has a hole in his heart, and he is "still healing through helping others." Tracy still laments: "[My] son was unarmed, and he was a 17-year-old and he didn't deserve to die in that manner. We missed out on the rest of his life. When you lose a child, it is a different type of pain, a different type of hurt. You never get over it."

Then the interviewer asked, "You have a deep faith in God and trust in Scripture. How has your faith changed since Trayvon's death?" Tracy Martin said, "There is only one way to come out of that dark place, and that is the power of prayer. I've heard people say we were a chosen family. I don't believe that; I just believe that God doesn't make mistakes.

There is an Anton Chekhov story called "The Lament." It is a simple story about an old man who drives a horse and buggy for hire through the city.

The story goes that the old man's son died recently and he wants so desperately to tell someone. A wealthy man hires the horse and buggy for a ride across town. As the wealthy man steps into the carriage, the old man says, "My son, my son. Let me tell you about my son." But the busy man doesn't have time to listen.

Well, after the wealthy man leaves, another man steps into the carriage. He wants to be driven to the other side of the city. Again, the old man says, "My son. My son. Let me tell you about my son." And again, this second man also doesn't bother to listen.

At the end of the day, the old man returns to the stables, unhitches his horse, and as he begins to brush the horse down for the night, the old man begins to tell the horse, "My son. My son." And he tells the horse the tragic story.

NPR reported on a man named Mike Pojman, the assistant headmaster and senior adviser of Roxbury Latin Boys' School. Pojman was inspired by a program at his alma mater, St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland, which connects seniors with those who have died alone.

The story focused on six seniors who volunteered to be pallbearers for a man who died alone in September, and for whom no next of kin was found. He's being buried in a grave with no tombstone, in a city cemetery. The students, dressed in jackets and ties, carry the plain wooden coffin, and take part in a short memorial. They read together, as a group:

Dear Lord, thank you for opening our hearts and minds to this corporal work of mercy. We are here to bear witness to the life and passing of Nicholas Miller. He died alone with no family to comfort him. But today we are his family, we are here as his sons We are honored to stand together before him now, to commemorate his life, and to remember him in death, as we commend his soul to his eternal rest.

After the brief ceremony the students laid flowers. Then they piled back into the van, driving back to school in time for their next lesson. One of those students named Brendan McInerney said, "I know I'm going back, and I'm going to go to school and take another quiz, but all that work, you can get caught up in it. … When you kind of get out of that bubble that you can kind of stuck in, you get perspective on what's really important in life."

In mid-February of 2016, Monty Williams, an Assistant Coach for the Oklahoma City Thunder pro basketball team, stood at his wife's funeral to give her eulogy. A few days earlier his wife Ingrid was tragically killed in a car accident. Williams had some profound things to say about grief, forgiveness, and God's sovereignty.

Williams says, "This is hard for my family, but this will work out. And my wife would punch me if I were to sit up here and whine about what is going on. That doesn't take away the pain, but it will work out because God causes all things to work out." He then goes on to talk about the family of the person who hit his wife, because the other driver died as well. Monty says, "Let us not forget that there were two people in this situation, and that family needs prayer as well. And we have no ill will toward that family. That family didn't wake up wanting to hurt my wife."

Possible Preaching Angle:

What a wonderful example of trusting God's sovereignty in tragic circumstances.

In her book The Year of Magical Thinking, author Joan Didion tries to make sense of her world after the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Didion marvels at the capacity of grief "to derange the mind," that is, to throw its victims into a mode of irrationality. They cannot think and live as though the person they loved is really dead. Surely there has been some mistake of diagnosis or identity "I was thinking as small children think," she writes, "as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the outcome."

One day Didion was clearing the shelves of her husband's clothes, putting them in stacks to give away to thrift shops. But she couldn't bring herself to give away his shoes. "I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return."

In a 2015 interview in GQ magazine, actor Nick Nolte shares that growing older has been a painful experience. When asked "When was the last time you cried?" Nolte said:

Today. I cry every day. … I cry when I try to get out of bed, because I'm in my 70s and my body hurts like hell. Once my joints are moving, I'm all right, but those are my first tears in the morning, wondering if the pain is going to get worse or get better …

At my age, a lot of your friends start dying, and that'll always bring on a good cry. Last summer, it was [screenwriter and director] Paul Mazursky. He had internal organ failure. … His wake was classic. I saw faces I hadn't seen in years. Mel Brooks. Richard Dreyfuss, who I hadn't seen since we filmed Down and Out in Beverly Hills. It was a great wake, but then you can't help but think about your own funeral and what that might be like.

We've all experienced the loss of loved ones. Family, friends, neighbors, valuable members of our community taken by death, or perhaps simply having moved away. And we all deal with that loss in different ways. But perhaps none quite as unique or creative as one woman from the tiny Japanese village of Nagoro. Ayano Tsukimisews life-size dolls of villagers from Nagoro who have died or moved away. She places them (already numbering over 350) in spots in the village that were special to them.

Editor’s Note: You can see the heart-touching pictures here

Possible Preaching Angle:

You might think this is either creepy or poignant, but it does remind us that the journey of grief is long and hard and there aren't any clear paths. It also raises questions like, How do you engage the losses in your life? Do you long to make it visible—in some tangible way that can help you understand and cope? While you might not fill your community with life-sized dolls of the dead, perhaps grief and remembrance can find a balance in your community, too.

The British novelist Julian Barnes tried to capture the loneliness of what he calls "grief-work." After thirty years of marriage, his wife Pat died from a brain tumor. Barnes was struck by how many of his closest friends didn't know how to talk honestly about his grief. Barnes said, "Some friends are as scared of grief as they are of death; they avoid you as if they fear infection." One friend advised him to get a dog. Some other friends suggested that he go on a long vacation. Barely a week after his wife's funeral, another friend cheerily asked, "So, what are you up to? Are you going on walking holidays?"

Barnes also describes the friends who can't even bring themselves to mention his wife's name. He calls them "the Silent Ones." Barnes writes:

I remember a dinner conversation in a restaurant with three married friends …. Each had known her for many years …. I mentioned her name; no one picked it up. I did it again, and again nothing. Perhaps the third time I was deliberately trying to provoke …. Afraid to touch her name, they denied her thrice, and I thought the worse of them for it.

Barnes imagines that these Silent Ones really want to say, "Your grief is an embarrassment. We're just waiting for it to pass. And, by the way, you're less interesting without her."