Grieving in Community
My favorite resident when I served in hospice was named Eric. He was quiet and reserved, preferring the peace of his room over the bustle of other parts of the Washington, D.C. brownstone that housed my workplace. Eric made it clear when he didn’t like people and would efficiently dismiss them. He liked me, though, and being in his presence was often the highlight of my day.
I viscerally remember the call on my day off letting me know that Eric had unexpectedly died. It was as if every noise around me became muted, every color dimmed. Eric’s health had been improving and the suddenness of his death left me speechless.
The next morning as I prepared for work, I wondered if it made sense for me to even go. I was oscillating between the numbness of shock and the intensity of sorrow. How was I going to be productive? But when I arrived at work, everyone was waiting for me. My co-workers knew how important my relationship with Eric was, knew the pain of me not getting to be by his side to perform the final acts of care that help move grief through nervous systems instead of getting stuck. The head nurse saw me eating a bowl of Fruit Loops in the corner of the kitchen - y’all, I hadn’t had Fruit Loops since I was a kid! - and nodded her head.
“That’s right,” she said. “Take comfort.”
She told me how it was always fine to take time off for grief but how even more helpful it was to come and grieve in community. Grieve in the presence of people who cared about me and could hold me as I figured out how to feel the ground beneath me again.
Neshia Alaovae, a brown skinned woman with black locs in a bun on her head, smiles at the camera. She is wearing a black t-shirt, blue flower-patterned overalls, green slip-on shoes and yellow glasses. Derek Dizon, a light brown skinned man stands next to her smiling. He is wearing a green baseball cap, grey shorts and black and white tennis shoes with orange socks. Both people are holding bright orange buckets full of colorful flowers in front of the A Resting Place entrance.
A Thoughtful Death’s first community event happened on August 17th. Dozens of people, including kids and four-legged friends, came through A Resting Place, a cultural and community grief center curated by my friend Derek Dizon, to make bouquets to show love, gratitude and reconciliation. Beforehand, I wondered if people would just come for the flowers and disregard the invitation to sit with their grief.
But a beautiful thing happened. People came and lingered not over the flowers but with the reflection prompts spread over the long table. Many stayed for over an hour, writing, talking with their neighbors or just contemplatively sitting. Some openly cried from the moment I greeted them all the way until they dried their eyes to leave. Three separate people told me that they had never heard of A Resting Place or A Thoughtful Death or the event but they were all thinking of the one year death anniversaries of grandfathers as they happened to walk by the heavily flower-perfumed welcome of the open door.
“This is exactly what I didn’t know I needed,” a new friend said.
Often in Western culture, we are expected to grieve quietly, quickly and, most painfully of all, alone. But when we come together, not to achieve anything, not to fix anything but just to be together as we mourn, healing has a chance to create something new. We can leave with more joy and hope than when we arrived.
What does grieving in community look like for you?
