{"id":3694,"date":"2020-04-26T03:16:41","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T10:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/?p=3694"},"modified":"2020-04-26T03:26:50","modified_gmt":"2020-04-26T10:26:50","slug":"when-everyone-is-dying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/when-everyone-is-dying\/","title":{"rendered":"When Everyone is Dying"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Jon Post<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like a family should.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now she is gone. Now we grieve.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve learned something in the eleven years I\u2019ve been privileged to spend with the sick and dying in Mozambique: Grief itself<\/em> can be a ritual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, I do not mean grief rituals; things like funerals, wakes, gathering in remembrance, nightly prayers, etc. I mean grieving<\/em> on purpose as a ritual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stay connected to Lurde, to Luisa, to Mariana, to Loice, to Torres, to Manejo, to Teresa, to Justino, to Maeza, to Augusto\u2026 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I practice a simple ritual. I breathe. I pray. I grieve. And I have a cup of coffee.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

P.S.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It feels remiss to post this without mentioning the state of the world and this virus. I can\u2019t help but notice how I feel that much of the reaction I see en masse among those I know and those I don\u2019t bears a striking resemblance to grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions like, \u201cwhat if we had locked down sooner?\u201d \u201cWhat if we had closed this border or that?\u201d \u201cWhat if it\u2019s not that bad?\u201d \u201cWhat if this is all for nothing?\u201d \u201cWhat if someone else was leading?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All seem so similar to questions like, \u201cWhat if he hadn\u2019t gotten in the car that day?\u201d \u201cWhat if she hadn\u2019t smoked for all those years?\u201d \u201cWhat if we had gotten a screening for the disease sooner?\u201d \u201cWhat if I had just called her and told her how I felt?\u201d \u201cWhat if things had been different . . . would he\/she\/they still be dead?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One time, a man looking at his own coming death, called his closest loved ones and asked them to join him in a garden. \u201cStay here and keep watch with me\u201d<\/a> he said and fell on his face on the ground and grieved<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3694"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3699,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions\/3699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonandlayne.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}