good grief

From Soul Pancake, page 84-- "It's morbid, but eye-opening: Put on your finest black and crash a funeral. Without an emotional connection to the deceased, observe love manifesting itself as grief."

(Soul Pancake is a book I picked up because Rainn Wilson started the movement, and Josh Ritter wrote a song for it. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's a book full of art and weird facts and fantastic questions about art, science, spirituality, philosophy, and life. They also produce wonderful videos.)

I didn't quite crash a funeral, but I volunteered at the last minute to be the musician for a children's memorial service at Tulane Hospital. I didn't know any of the families, just one of the chaplains. It was a bit of a scramble to figure out songs for a secular memorial service, and I decided to bring my ukulele this morning because it's a little easier to play so might quell whatever nervousness I came up with. This whole thing probably could have been kind of awkward, but I decided to focus on how beautiful it was, which reminded me of that Soul Pancake page.

Only a few families showed up out of the probably two or three dozen children whom we lit candles for. I can only imagine reentering the place where your child died. One family showed up well after the service ended, during the reception. The chaplain told me this was typical-- families want to grieve, but are unsure of how they want to or are able to.

I heard a lot of stories and saw a lot of pictures of really awesome kids, kids who rode their little bikes through the hospital hallways and banged on the piano in the chapel the day before they passed, kids who lit up the world around them. Lives cut short.


I've had a lot of heavy, morbid thoughts the last few days. On Thursday night, while taking some visitors to the French Quarter, I was driving at a reasonable speed down a decently lit road. It had been raining on and off all evening, so I was focusing on the road, trying not to find any deep water with my little car. It was so dim and misty out, I didn't notice until it was almost too late that a person was meandering slowly across Claiborne Ave with a shopping cart full of stuff, not too far in front of me. I hit the brakes, but I hit water. We weren't slowing down fast enough. I swerved. I fish tailed. I regained control of the car, just barely, without hitting the far curb or the person and their shopping cart.

That entire evening, I had horrifying images flashing across my brain of that person flying up the hood of my car.

I thought a lot about what would have happened. That person was almost certainly homeless. I wondered if they were altered, or actually trying to get hit by a car. I wondered what would have happened if I hit them. I wondered if the police or paramedics would come quickly or not. I wondered if my car swerving at about 30mph was enough to seriously injure or kill a human pushing a shopping cart. I wondered who would grieve for the loss of this person.

I thought about the people laid to rest at the Katrina Memorial and wondered who was grieving for them.

Today, at the children's service, I also heard stories about homicides (and the good work of the police and detectives and chaplains involved). I found myself grieving for the children, for their families,and for this city. I've seen so many beautiful things in South Louisiana this year, and it can be incredibly hard to balance that beauty with all of the terrible things. The wetlands disappearing. Homeless people being forgotten. Children being murdered.

This page in Soul Pancake was really an exercise in beauty. You don't really grieve for things you don't care about. Being part of that service this morning was really lovely, and I'm so glad that I could offer my gift of music in that way. There were a lot of dark thoughts swirling around in my head, but ultimately, it's incredible to think about how much I love this world. It's worth a little sadness from time to time.