Calling a Transit Strike: Allowing Grief to Stop the Trains from Running on Time
Letting Grief Take Up a Bigger Space in Our Communities and Our Lives
“You’ve just been through one of the most difficult things a person can go through. I don’t think ‘being normal’ is a reasonable goal,” I told her. She had found her daughter dead of an overdose several weeks ago. She had returned to work and felt like she was failing at managing other people. She found her hard-won sobriety could not withstand the heavy burden of carrying intense grief all by herself. Everyone she respected in her life—her mother, her pastor, her boss—told her she needed to come see me in the ER. To be honest, I’m not sure why.
She was absolutely struggling; her grief compounded by guilt and shame as she wondered what role her own addictions played in her daughter’s death. There is no doubt she was in deep. I don’t know what those who told her to come to the ER thought that I, a complete stranger, could do to ease her struggle that they, the people near and dear to her, could not. Sadly, when people are in crisis, I, as an ER doctor, have basically one tool at my disposal: psychiatric hospitalization. However, because of the laws of supply and demand, I am only allowed to use that when a person is an immediate physical danger to themself or others. Even if I could use it more often, I don’t think it serves a person who is acutely grieving well for a wide variety of reasons, some of which I’ll address below.
As a human, I can listen and I can offer time. If I am feeling moved, I may even offer a hug. However, on this particular day, I did not have much time to offer. I gave her all I could, but we were busy and approaching chaos for most of the day. She wasn’t even the only person dealing with intense grief. One woman found out her son had died about 10 minutes before I told her she had cancer. I told another woman she was probably going to die within the next 1 to 2 weeks. Growing up in a grief-illiterate society, I do the best I can in these situations, although I always feel like I am muddling through. I used to keep my armor up and tell myself I would deal with it later, only to never deal with it. Now that I’m more emotionally open, it takes a lot of work not to become a pain sponge. I often fail.
The four of us (those three patients and I) were all caught in a realm of profound lack in American culture: the absence of a cultural technology around grief. By cultural technology, I mean standard practices within a culture related to how we approach death and grief. Many cultural differences in how we approach death can be encapsulated in these questions:
How do we care for people as they near death?
How is a person’s body handled after death?
How is grief expressed?
What rituals are performed after death and who is involved in these rituals?
How long are family members or spouses expected to be in mourning?
How do family members signal to the outside world that they are in mourning?
How are the deceased honored on an ongoing basis?
What new roles do family members take on? (For instance, when can or should a spouse remarry and who takes over the role of matriarch or patriarch within a family?)
When I look at these aspects of culture surrounding grief, I see that in the U.S.:
We typically don’t care for our loved ones as they near death. This is outsourced to hospitals or nursing homes.
We typically don’t handle our loved ones' bodies after death. This is outsourced to funeral homes.
We express our grief quietly and privately, if at all.
We have funerals, memorial services, or celebrations of life, but there is wide variation regarding who is expected to come, what is shared, and how the person is honored.
Spouses and family members are expected to return to their usual activities, often within a week or two.
There is no standard way to express that you are in mourning.
There is no standard way to honor the deceased on an ongoing basis.
There is no clearly communicated expectation about when or how to assume new roles in the family.
We are meant to grieve in community, not alone. Doing anything in community these days feels like a struggle. Getting people to come over for a dinner party often feels like a Herculean task. The importance of being held (physically and emotionally), while we work through the messiness of loss is vital to feeling like we belong, like our feelings are valid, and like we are worthy regardless of how we are feeling. We are meant to sing together, hold each other, cry out in despair, and have others listen to that cry.
In Ireland and Scotland, there were women called keeners, who were specifically trained to cry out and sing songs of mourning. However, the practice decreased in prevalence starting in the 18th century, until it was almost extinct in the mid-20th century. They led the mourners in physical movements of grief such as rocking and kneeling.
Malidoma Some, an elder in the west African tribe called Dagara says, “People who do not know how to weep together are people who cannot laugh together. People who know not the power of shedding their tears together are like a time bomb, dangerous to themselves and to the world around them…And grief is in fact owed to the dead as the only ingredient that can complete the death process.” In the Dagara culture, the funeral ritual lasts for several days. It includes musicians, mourners, and containers, or people who keep the mourners from leaving the ritual area or doing anything harmful. Everyone in the village is expected to attend the funeral, and it’s conventional for strangers who pass by to pay their respects. Death stops every activity of life, so it is considered highly offensive to carry on with business as usual in a village where someone has just died.
I had a small, simple experience of how healing music and community can be while grieving. My mother-in-law and I attended a ceremony at a local cemetery where we sang songs about grief, harmonized, and listened to the resonance with at least 100 other people. The act of singing felt reparative and the image of a ventilator came to mind after a song, which helped me realize how much grief I had related to COVID that I hadn’t addressed.
Compare the Dagara approach to America, where a proper Catholic funeral is complete in about an hour, then we head to the luncheon in the church basement. The expectation is that people return to their normal activities as soon as possible. Often, co-workers, neighbors, even some friends are not aware someone has endured a tragic loss.
It is not only in how we address the grief of strangers or casual acquaintances where there are missing links, though the fact that this web of support is missing is still significant. The larger challenge is that even in holding and sharing the grief of those much closer to us, we are often at a loss.
My husband and my mother both lost their fathers three days apart, about a year and a half ago. I wanted so badly to help them feel they had the space to fully grieve. I was also grieving my father-in-law and my grandfather. I created my own ritual for my grandfather. I tried to create space for big messy emotions. For two people, who would admit they hate to cry in front of others almost as much as they hate to ask for help, I didn’t have the emotional, social, or cultural tools to show support beyond simply keeping the trains running on time. I think ultimately this was probably the opposite of what my husband and my mother needed me to do.
They needed me to declare a transit strike, stop the trains, and perhaps get everyone to lay down on the tracks to keep the trains from moving. I needed someone farther out in our circle of support to do that for me, and as the circles move outward and get bigger, the lifting gets lighter. It is no less essential.
I’d like to leave you with a few questions to grapple with:
How do we let grief take up a larger space in our lives?
How do we allow others to take this space when they need it?
How do we look back at our ancestral traditions of grieving and rebuild what was lost?
How do we grieve that we have lost the ability to grieve?
Speaking of grief, the murders, kidnappings, and war in Israel have been heavy on my mind. I have been holding the humanity, dignity, and struggle of the Israelis alongside the humanity, dignity, and struggle of the Palestinians. IKAR, a beautiful Jewish community in LA, has been sharing some prayers for this grief-filled time specifically in the Jewish community, but in the human community at large. Psalm 130 is one of them:
A Song of Ascents.
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
2 Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!
3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.
5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
7 O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
8 It is he who will redeem Israel
from all its iniquities.