Items

• 2020

  Mourning During COVID

  Being a pastor in the time of COVID-19 has been a difficult task, and nothing has been more difficult than leading people through the process of mourning the loss of loved ones. In my church, multiple people have lost husbands, fathers, and friends. Towards the beginning fo the pandemic our church lost one of it’s most recognized members to complications due to surgery. However, because of the coronavirus the standard practice of end-of-life ministry, helping the family with mourning, and leading them through rituals which help the family receive closure with their loss was unavailable. I, as the person’s pastor, was unable to be with him in his last days, and neither was his wife. Any final prayers, family meetings, religious discussions surrounding the topic of death which are standard with pastoral ministry were impossible because of the virus. The funeral was small, less than a dozen people. Many of their friends and family were left without any normal medium to mourn and lament the loss of their friend, husband, father, and brother. This left many people in spiritual limbo, and drastically changed the way people were able to mourn. Religious funerals, grief care, and even simple things like having people cook meals for them are invaluable to help with the process of mourning loss and accepting death, not just for the immediate family but for all around. A family friend can, perhaps, mourn by bringing the family flowers or food directly. But, under COVID there is too much of a risk. They now have to mourn alone. The same goes for family. Though they had a small graveside burial, they didn’t receive the social benefit of being surrounded by all who loved and were affected by their husband and father, the edification of seeing the sum, value, and product of their life expressed through tears, laughter, and people united to mourn and celebrate life. The ceremonies themselves, offering a wealth of support during a time of mourning, is enough of a loss, but there is more. After the rituals end, the family is still left without a core member of their life and need further help to manage their grief. Normally, in religion, a pastor can offer a level of grief counseling. But for those technologically behind, who can’t FaceTime or use Zoom, receiving this care becomes both difficult and brings up several ethical issues. How does a pastor, like me, meet with an elderly woman to walk them through grief? How can this be done without risking infection? Is it better to leave them alone to mourn without their religious community and authority? All of these problems have brought light to the importance of religious responses to major life events. Beyond the topics of faith, belief, dogma, and the supernatural, religion offers a wealth of benefits to people’s basic life needs, be it sociologically, psychologically, or existentially. It helps them put words to the indescribable pain they feel. It gives them a channel to express the loss in their heart. It gives communal space to lament, cry out, laugh, and find meaning through suffering and pain. Religion gets people through the darkness that is inherent to existence. COVID, however, has changed how this is done, and actively harmed people’s ability to mourn in a proper, healthy way. There is now one less way to manage traumatic, scarring life events, and find healing and recovery that comes with the penetrating pain in death. Hopefully, we will find healing from COVID, but not just the virus itself, but all that has been lost because of it. Hopefully, we can find healing from the loss of mourning, the loss of celebration, of community, of sacred expression. The sickness from the virus is only one thing of many which can bring devastation. To fight the virus is only part of the process of restoration. We also need to recover everything else in our lives the virus ripped away.