When Grief Interrupts | PASSAGES :012
"Mourn with those who mourn" & learning how to grieve from sixth graders
Hello and welcome subscribers new and old! It was a big week around here, but for more on the launch of The Way Home, check out my “Week of The Way Home” post. As for what’s going on here, welcome to another weekly PASSAGES post!
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. —Romans 12:15
Last Tuesday afternoon I stood on the edge of a small gym. Strobe lights flashing. Music blaring. And a mob of sweaty sixth graders running laps around a path marked by traffic cones.
It was my daughter Zara’s “Fun Run,” an annual event at her elementary school where students raise funds for school programming from family and friends by trying to run as many laps as they can in a set amount of time.
Before school that day Zara had called it “child labor” because she had to send out a video and ask for pledges. But any complaints she had with the fundraiser seemed to have dissipated by the time the event began. Because she was now steadily moving around the gym, one lap sprinting and the next dancing with her friends and belting out the words to Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.”—all of it with a smile on her face.
This Fun Run was actually a bit more bootleg than the usual affair. No fancy inflatable finish line and fewer party lights. That’s because the sixth graders’ event had been postponed and they were having their Fun Run on a different day than the rest of the school. The reason for the delay wasn’t at all fun…
It was tragic.
A week earlier the forty-something year-old mother of one of Zara's classmates and friends had died after a multiyear battle with cancer, leaving behind four children, a husband, a mother, a sister, and other relatives. It was heartbreaking.
But there was something beautiful in how the school responded to this tragedy. When they found out that the funeral was scheduled for the Friday afternoon at the same time as the school-wide Fun Run, they decided to reschedule the Fun Run for the sixth graders—both to encourage any students who wanted to attend the memorial service to express solidarity and mourn with their classmate AND so that the grieving student wouldn’t miss out on the fun Fun Run experience with his classmates.
As I stood there in the gym and watched Zara and her classmates, one of them carrying a heavy burden, running around joyfully and playfully, I pictured the scene from the previous Friday when the many were gathered to join the one in his grief and to remember the beautiful, too-brief life of his mother.
And there was something so right about all of it.
Something hopeful.
Because instead of following the death-denying, grief-avoiding script that is so dominant in society, these sixth graders, supported by their school, were embodying another way. They didn’t gloss over the grief. They didn’t disappear into diversions. They let the loss and sadness and grief interrupt their plans, their lives, their fun—their Fun Run.
By putting their plans on hold, surrounding their friend with love, and joining him in sorrow, they protected this painful, sacred moment in their classmate’s life and let him know that he is not alone. And, also, by waiting to have their Fun Run until he could join them, they also made a beautiful affirmation that he belongs, grief and all.
As the running festivities came to an end and the gym emptied out, I was in awe of these sixth graders—these young teachers of wisdom and compassion—and found myself wishing, praying, hoping that we all could become a bit more like them… letting the grief of the people around us and the sorrow of our world interrupt us.
stunning. "Because instead of following the death-denying, grief-avoiding script that is so dominant in society, these sixth graders, supported by their school, were embodying another way. They didn’t gloss over the grief. They didn’t disappear into diversions. They let the loss and sadness and grief interrupt their plans, their lives, their fun..." this is reality. finally we are speaking it.