A few weeks ago, a boy we know lost his six-year battle with the cancer he'd been fighting since he was three. He was only nine. The stars would just not align in the way he needed them to, no matter how hard he fought or how hard his parents tried or how hard the rest of us hoped and prayed. On the day he died, it poured like crazy. It stormed and stormed and the wind howled and the skies unleashed everything from pelting rain to piercing hail to furious snow. I remember staring out the window, nervously folding laundry, and being overwhelmed by the force and sadness of it all.
Last Friday was the memorial service. That morning I watched the tv coverage of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I thought about the boy's parents and how they must know what that feels like, to be overtaken by an insurmountable wave of grief and pain. I thought about the people who didn't survive the earthquake, and I thought about the people who were still missing and about the families who were still wondering, searching, hoping, praying to find their loved ones safe, and I thought again about the force and sadness of it all.
At the memorial service, the boy's friends wore t-shirts from a drawing he'd made shortly before he died. There was a sea of green t-shirts and of faces of children who sort of knew but also didn't know the enormity of what had happened, of what was happening, and it was almost too much to bear. It was too much to bear. I couldn't think through my tears so I forced myself to separate slightly from what was happening. To separate from what was happening all around the world.
That night I was restless and unsettled. I kept trying to push the images and thoughts of the day out of my mind. Something about the memorial service happening during the aftermath of the earthquake had made everything more real and more personal somehow. I was reminded of how confusing and chaotic grief can be, how vast it is. And I can neither deny nor describe my belief that these things are connected—that all grief is connected. We are connected by oceans and we are connected by grief. Oceans of grief.
Are we connected by joy and love, too?
