Tragedy

We are, for the most part, terrible at confronting tragedy. Grieving is a process we rush, not one we savor, stories are retold so long as they have happy endings and we love revisionist history when it acquits us of the sins of our fathers and mothers. I’m not sure I could pinpoint what part of our society reinforces this relatively common experience, but I am certain that we are simply dumbfounded when it comes to confronting, living in, and learning from the tragedies we experience regularly in our lives. In my religious upbringing hope was the refrain heard most often over the discordant melody of tragedy; that somehow god would make something good out of a bad situation, that we should hope for a brighter tomorrow and that things will eventually get better. And I have to confess that these are compelling beliefs for me as well but there is a part of me that can’t quite stomach the notion that there is always some good that comes out of our tragedies. I feel like, sometimes, hope gets in the way of the more human part of reacting to tragedy. We don’t know how to live with sorrow or trade our feelings of loss. We worry about visiting our own demons on others or subjecting them to a version of ourselves we’re not altogether comfortable with.

I did not attend my grandmother's funeral the reason for which (the one I shared with my father and others) was primarily logistical. My partner was in St. Louis in the middle of student teaching and I was missing her terribly and boarding a plane to go see her. The other reasons that I failed to share with anyone at the time were, perhaps, the more important ones. My grandmother had fallen into increasingly deeper spats of dementia as her life ended and there was a large part of me that already felt she was gone. The last time I saw her, it wasn't her anymore. I suppose (or at least convinced myself) that my grieving had already begun. I said goodbye that final visit in more ways than one. I had no intention of attempting to visit my grief on others.

A month or so after the funeral the family gathered to bury Grandma’s ashes. Not all of us were there, just like before. The moment was awkward. Someone suggested we bury one of our beer cans with her and the only thing I could think about was whether or not anyone really wanted to talk about the fact that Grandma was, for all intents and purposes, an alcoholic. I was asked to offer a prayer and over the swelling and passing sound of several cars, I did.Then we buried our grief in the ground.

And so, Good Friday will come and pass this Lent with all due haste.We'll take a moment to leave our sanctuaries in a Tenebrae silence and then quickly shuffle on to the joy of Easter. It’s so much less effort this way, so much less awkward. The dwelling will be on new hope and new life rather than living the lives that are so obviously staring back at us. Because, in the end, we still don’t know what it means to live the tragedies of everyday life even though we are all painfully aware that we need to.

“The glory of god is humanity fully alive.” – Iranaeus of Lyons