Grief



A few months ago, my family celebrated the 40-year anniversary of my father’s passing. It was a surreal moment for me. When I had the opportunity to speak, one of the points that I made was that I am not sure if I ever fully grieved my father’s passing. I still carry with me some residue of grief, and I don’t know if I will ever get over it.

Grief, in itself, is a powerful human experience that encompasses every single aspect of our lives. The truth is, we grieve because of loss - deep loss. We don’t only grieve when we have lost a loved one, like my father, who passed on over 40 years ago, or my sister, who passed on recently, or all of the loved ones that we each have lost over many, many years. We grieve because of a loss that we may feel in our lives. And whereas the loss may take different forms, the grief may also differ. It may be individual or communal.

For good reasons, I’d like to focus on the communal grief that we all share as Americans. The losses that have caused this immense grief in our society didn’t begin yesterday, last week, last month, last year, or even the last decade. It is the kind of loss that has festered in our communities over a long, long time. And the tragedy is that we seem incapable of dealing with the deep sense of loss that we each feel.

Many of us grieve the loss of norms that we came to believe held our society together. Some of these norms are generally unsaid, but they go to the heart of what we believe a decent society should aspire to. It used to be that using derogatory words or slurs against people of Color, or our brothers and sisters in the LGBTQ community, was not tolerated; people generally do not use those slurs in public. But now we use them with little to no remorse. It used to be that during the State of the Union address, there was some modicum of respect accorded to the President. But if you watched the last State of the Union address, you would wonder what was going on. We grieve over things like these.

We also grieve over the loss of the American Dream. The first time I learned about the American Dream was in Atlanta. Although the words seemed strange at first, the concept did not. I figured there was some hope in it. Over time, I have learned that every American who works hard can purchase a home, raise a family, retire after a career in the industry of his or her choice, and live the rest of his or her days helping raise the grandchildren. As lofty and hopeful as this dream is, we grieve because, for many of our loved ones and neighbors, it isn’t their reality. The economy has been so stacked against millions that they can only view the American Dream from afar. We also grieve this loss because we don’t think our children and grandchildren may be able to afford this dream, which has turned out to be more expensive than it should be.

We grieve over the loss of honesty in the public square. For some strange reason, we have a situation where facts are manipulated by the news media and our political leaders to suit their own parochial interests. For many of these people, facts don’t matter, honesty doesn’t matter, and truth, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder. Consider the initial description of Alex Preethi, the nurse who was assassinated in Minneapolis, or the events of January 6, 2020, when the Capitol was ransacked by Americans. It stretches credulity to believe in any other narrative other than what we all witnessed with our very own eyes on TV. But we are being invited not to believe what we saw.

We grieve the loss of good neighborliness. Some of us are not as neighborly as we used to be. People desire to be good neighbors. People want to be good neighbors. But the overall lack of trust has reached the point where we don’t relate well to each other, so we cannot be good neighbors. Over many years, I have heard stories of neighbors pulling together to help a neighbor in distress. I have heard how helpful some neighbors have been to each other, especially to the children. We grieve.

We grieve the loss of our inability to hold face-to-face conversations with our children, partners, friends, colleagues, and many others. Someone once told me that Elon Musk once said that one of his children said, "Friday nights are when we eat with strangers." This is because the family goes out for dinner every Friday. I am not sure if your family has a similar practice. What amazes me is that you and I go to a restaurant only to see ourselves and other people who are supposed to be conversing with each other, spending the majority of our time on our phones. People can’t seem to put their phones down. Families can’t seem to put their phones down and focus on each other. I don’t think it is because people don’t want to talk to each other; what we are saying is that we don’t find each other interesting enough to put our phones down to focus on each other.

We grieve the failure of our institutions. We grieve the loss of Main Street and the life it once brought to small-town America. We grieve the loss of Civil Liberties, which guarantee freedom, accessibility, and progress for all. We grieve the loss of many different aspects of the life and limb that held our common lives together, albeit imperfectly.

For some of us, our grief is similar to Jesus’ grief over Jerusalem. Hear Jesus’ lament:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”

Jesus grieves over Jerusalem because Jerusalem had not fulfilled its true promise of what it can be for its own people. Jerusalem appears to be a pale shadow of itself. Jerusalem had woefully failed to look in the different array of mirrors that were presented to it by different prophets.

The truth is, those who step away from God step away from accountability, reckoning, responsibility, and answering. This is because God is all about accountability. We have stepped away from God, and our society has gradually done so as well, thereby making us less accountable to each other. To be open to being accountable is to continue to walk with God.

Lent is about our willingness to walk with God because it expresses our desire to be accountable.

Lent is about grieving and knowing that your grief is not in vain because you are holding yourself and others accountable. 

Manny+