Our nation spent a decade mourning September 11th; but we experience as many deaths every single day now and have for a month. We need to mourn.
In the context of all the innovative responses to the COVID-19 / SARS-2 (SARS2) crisis, I am proud of the “do not go gently into that good night” mentality of our species. Especially in America, we are fighting back with force in many places, from soup kitchens to cell biology labs. That’s who we are. From masks to 3D printed medical gear to big debt forgiveness to friends taking care of friends family, our spirit is revealed in a crisis.
But we seem more focused on creating content to amuse and bemuse the droves stuck at home than we are on mourning our lonesome dead. Funerals canceled, communities cracked into shards, and digital stimuli overloading our neural circuitry, we are wounded and distracting ourselves with abandon.
It takes courage to focus on solutions; it takes integrity to pause and mourn.
Here’s what I would propose for the service:
Ask everyone to watch a pre produced video of this at some shared time, then schedule a real time group video chat for followup — and have that be a candlelight ceremony. Start with one person lighting a candle to represent hope against the storm, and have each zoom participant follow on and light a candle after she lights hers.
The video would be 22 minutes long, and the video chat about 30 minutes, so the whole thing about an hour. Each piece would be shot independently and edited together. For a script, I’ve outlined the sections with examples to have more feeling in it, but they are just rough examples — each participant would choose their own story.
Introduction: A great author reads a few words of context, maybe something from a war time poet of generations passed
Music: A striking cello solo gives us all the mental space to pause and reflect
Welcome: Someone sagacious welcomes and addresses that we need to take time to mourn, to honor, and to heal amidst it all — and tells a story about the importance or stories and mourning.
Sharing a Mourning Tradition #1: Someone from the rural, Western tradition talks about Scandinavian influenced funeral traditions throughout the mountain west
Sharing a Mourning Tradition #2: A band with ties to New Orleans walks us through a Second Line, first in story form explaining the tradition, then with music
Sharing a Mourning Tradition #3: An artist from the northeast talks about sitting shiva
Music: Amazing Grace and other simple folk tunes
Celebrating the Survivors: Stories from survivors and their families
Remembering Those Lost: A reading of the names
Closing Music: Praise music that’s upbeat and praises life itself
Closing Message: A teenage girl reads “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
What happens when we take time to do this? I can say that just writing it I feel a little better. The tension we have to hold to stay focused on solutions in the middle of a very scary crisis is real — real in our bodies, too. It’s not easy to stay distracted in one of the great crises of the history of our species.
Solutions will ultimately heal our bodies. But we are not our bodies.