A Jon Post

Grief is not a disease from which I recover, it is not something that I hope has a cure, it is nothing to which I will ever seek a vaccine.

This week Lurde died at home with her family. She lived in mine and with mine for a full year and we grew to know much of what was beautiful and much of what was not in her.

Just like a family should.

Lurde loved deeply at times, selfishly at times, lazily at times, and lavishly at times. She ate too much and laughed more than her fair share. She didn’t clean up after herself much and she always ensured that I knew that she cared about how my family and I were feeling. She went out of her way to ask how rested we felt each day.

Now she is gone. Now we grieve.

I’ve learned something in the eleven years I’ve been privileged to spend with the sick and dying in Mozambique: Grief itself can be a ritual.

No, I do not mean grief rituals; things like funerals, wakes, gathering in remembrance, nightly prayers, etc. I mean grieving on purpose as a ritual.

I wake up each morning and sit in the still of the darkness before the sunrise. I practice breathing, I practice praying, and I practice grieving, then I come inside and have a cup of coffee.

Breath, prayer, grief, coffee. These are my morning rituals. I do not pretend that they are the best morning rituals nor that I am any good at them but they seem to do their job of keeping in in touch with the my Father, with the living, and with the dead.

I stay connected to Lurde, to Luisa, to Mariana, to Loice, to Torres, to Manejo, to Teresa, to Justino, to Maeza, to Augusto… the ones I love and grieve from this last year. There are many more names on that list from the years prior. If I do not make my grief my own, I think my grief would own me.

So I practice a simple ritual. I breathe. I pray. I grieve. And I have a cup of coffee.  

P.S.

It feels remiss to post this without mentioning the state of the world and this virus. I can’t help but notice how I feel that much of the reaction I see en masse among those I know and those I don’t bears a striking resemblance to grief.

Questions like, “what if we had locked down sooner?” “What if we had closed this border or that?” “What if it’s not that bad?” “What if this is all for nothing?” “What if someone else was leading?”

All seem so similar to questions like, “What if he hadn’t gotten in the car that day?” “What if she hadn’t smoked for all those years?” “What if we had gotten a screening for the disease sooner?” “What if I had just called her and told her how I felt?” “What if things had been different . . . would he/she/they still be dead?”

These are not questions that lead to answers and, it seems to me, they are questions spurred by grieving without knowing it. Oh, how I wish we could learn to see and know our grief.  

One time, a man looking at his own coming death, called his closest loved ones and asked them to join him in a garden. “Stay here and keep watch with me” he said and fell on his face on the ground and grieved before a Holy Father. I like to think of that man as the one in whose steps I am trying to walk. Maybe at least I can stay here and keep watch over the dying and grieve with them when they ask it of me.