The Sound of Collective Grief

We had a Really Big Thing planned for this month. We’ve been planning and preparing for it since September. This past weekend was circled in our mind’s calendars. It was happening. Everything is in place. Everything in our hands has moved forward, we were merely waiting on the final piece which would begin the last week of March.

This morning I sat down with my planner to look at the month of April. An empty to-do list on one side mocked me, a blank space for the month’s big goal taunted me, and a little index card I’d slipped in place to remind me of the Really Big Thing sat there like the too-small pair of jeans you’ll never wear again but keep just in case. I closed my planner and acknowledged the lump midway down my chest instead. Right behind my breastbone, back in there, hard, hurting.

The lump is grief.

The loss is real.

We know, deep in us, our plan will move forward at some point in the future, perhaps weeks, most likely months. But it won’t look like we’d hoped. The secreted wishes and delights of our hearts that began to shine in the past few months, the smiles we’d give one another as we talked about our future, the birth of a kind of hope we haven’t shared with one another to this degree in our marriage yet, it all feels crushed, just a bit.

Yesterday the President announced another month of social distancing to help flatten the curve. We are on board with this. We support this. We are in week three of our own quarantine. Nate has only left for groceries twice and I have only left once to go for an evening drive with the windows open. Yesterday the lump which is in my chest today, began in my stomach.

I heard a Christian say once that Christians shouldn’t have breaking points and I thought they made a good point, but I have learned a lot since then. Most of all I’ve learned Christians should have many breaking points, whole series of them, volumes and volumes of them, many places along the way when our weakness overcomes us and we cannot stomach the thought of more of this (whatever this is). And during it we find God is near, His Spirit is comforting and helping, our salvation is still secure, and our Father still cares. I feel near my breaking point today.

I skimmed the social media this morning and all the influencers™ were talking schedules and joy in the sorrow and how to hold space for others and making a plan for getting out in nature (because they live near creeks and waterfalls and snow capped mountains and not acres and acres of sidewalks), but all I had in my heart was grief, this giant swallow of grief that couldn’t be swallowed. People are dying and businesses too. And I know that’s important, but mostly I felt the grief that comes from waylaid hopes and crushed plans. There will only ever be one April of 2020, and now it will pass in the same manner as the previous three weeks and who knows how long it will be before we see the fruition of our dream.

I sense many of us will be looking at our planners in the next few days, too. A big blank page will taunt us with all the days and minutes and weekends and plans with which we’d slated to fill it. Maybe there were birthdays or weddings planned where now there are funerals. Maybe there was a graduation or a promotion or a new job or an old friend and now there is only more of this, the same four walls and Netflix shows and 1000 piece puzzles. Maybe the grief will hit you too, land in your stomach or your head or the back of your throat or somewhere deeper, more carnal, less local. I don’t know. But I do know that if we’re honest, most of us are feeling it somewhere.

This? This is the collective sadness. The rent garments of an entire nation. The women wailing through the streets of every city and small town. This virus is no respecter of person or plans. I appreciate the Influencers™ who try to turn the tide in their small ways (Lord knows, every day I’m trying something new and hoping it will work too), but making plans and saying mantras and sharing memes won’t fix this grief. They’ll only waylay it for a later time, a quieter moment, a more honest occasion. We are all feeling this. And if we aren’t feeling it to the same degree or at the same time, we will feel it or have already felt it.

Is this our breaking point? I don’t know. But I do know his grace is sufficient and his power is shown to be perfect in our breaking points and if we can’t talk about that, I don’t know what else we can.

If today feels like a breaking point for you, too, for reasons too close to your heart to share or speak about or even whisper. If you feel done with quarantine and your kids and your spouse and your loneliness. If you had planned something for weeks and months that had to be canceled. If you cannot go to the funerals of your friends and your families. If you find the grief growing as exponentially as the virus grows. I just wanted to say to you today, it’s okay. This grief is collective which means it is shared even if it doesn’t feel like it. Even if we are far apart from one another and the grief we hold isn’t the same as the grief another holds—we are still sharing it. We are still feeling it. And we still need one another to admit it. Right out loud.

So here’s my confession today: I grieve the loss of what this month was supposed to be, the circle I erase from the calendar of my mind, the index card I move to June or July or August, the putting away of my planner until our plans are made again. And I acknowledge the lump of grief. I feel it. I pay attention to it. I trust God knows it’s there too and isn’t surprised by it. And I breathe.