When a Community Grieves

“Not again!” We shout when something dreadful assaults our senses on the news—“Six Amish children killed in their one-room school house by a madman! For God’s Sake! Not our children!” When disaster strikes any group, Amish school children, or thousands of multicultural adults in high-rise office buildings, our hearts crack open, and the grandest part of us reaches out with compassion and generosity. We gather our united strength, send grief counselors to the fore, start fund-raising campaigns, create rebuilding projects, set up memorials, and/or display our allegiance with flags at half-mast, or at the very least prepare and offer casseroles.

Community grieving reveals the best of humanity. It seems a contrary reaction, this instantaneous expression of good will to societal tragedies, especially when most organizations allow a meager 3-day leave for employees suffering from a family death. And, individually, we get impatient with grievers because too much emphasis on death makes us uncomfortable. We wish people would just hurry up and get over their losses and get on with living so we can experience some peace. Even so, when something catastrophic happens in our country, we rise to the occasion, projecting how it might be for us in similar circumstances. Our hearts ache in unison when hearing of parents losing sons and daughters in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other warring places.

Genetically, humans are interconnected and amazingly alike. There are only tiny differences in solitary genes that affect surface traits such as the color of our skin and our hair. It’s no wonder that our suffering creates such a sense of togetherness; we all naturally relate to it. People all over the country grieved for those little Amish angels and their families. Many simultaneously, if unconsciously, were completing a portion of their own unresolved grief. Grief completion demands that people experience and react to the pain, accept the reality of the loss, let go of their attachment, create ways to hang onto their memories, and hopefully find some meaning in the loss.

Recovery requires the ability to reinvest our energies back into our own lives, lives without the presence of the deceased. Creation and acceptance of a new normal brings healing. Grieving is both challenging and difficult, and is too often blocked and incomplete. Stymied grief ascends during community tragedy, reigniting our collective pain, and creating a sense of togetherness.

Disenfranchised losses such as infertility, abortion, neonatal death, death of an ex-spouse or lover, or pet death are not yet socially recognized. Accepted or not, these events need to be felt, accepted, and let go of in order for healing to occur. If ignored, people find themselves experiencing intensified feelings of anger, guilt, powerlessness, and even hopelessness. These conditions seem to the outside world as without cause because they are not identified as “real.”
Processing time, of course, varies according to our losses, but grief is grief, big, small, and in between. Unfortunately, grief is never wholly resolved and can be triggered to lesser degrees, by sights, sounds, smells, sad books and movies, and also the losses of others. Its lack of conclusion is especially evident during public or world tragedies.

When a community grieves, many of us also experience anticipatory grief--feeling pain and loss in advance for what we may ultimately have to face. And, though people are loath to admit it, there is a sense of relief when something out there beats up other people’s lives. Relief, because, one more time they’ve escaped harms way. We all know that at any time, in any place it could be us, will one day be us, but it’s not today, thank you, God. Fortunately, in compassionate community this is accompanied with such thoughts as: “How can we help? How can we companion them? How can we commemorate the tragedy, this loss of life? How can we help these folks find meaning, purpose and hope again?”

Suffering is part of the human condition, and as such, most of us possess a vast reservoir of love and compassion from which to draw. And because of the depth of these feelings, when the news of the tragic and terrible reach us, the beauty of our shared humanity ascends. We find the courage to face the unthinkable together. We’ve seen this happen before, and we’ll see it again. Our unity creates one voice, one body, one magnificent force for good. The old church hymn, “We Shall Overcome,” is a suitable refrain when a community embraces grief together.