grief and loss and chicken wings

2,000 words | 7 minute read

i’m taking a summer course for my theology and social work degrees. it’s in the school of theology, but there are a few other social work students here too, and we’re doing a lot of readings by therapists and psychoanalysts to understand the relationship between grief and the human behavior that it effects. it’s only a three-week course, and two of them are gone, but i’m still sitting with some of the things that we talked about in just the very first class. we talked about the ways grief is socially acceptable and the ways that it isn’t. for example, in american culture, grief is both private and pathologized. there are moments, of course, when “excessive” emotion is considered “acceptable,” like at the very moment of finding out about a loss, and at rituals like funerals where we are supposed to remember the one who we have lost. and then, we go forward. we find ways to downplay, or forget, or just move on. to “successfully” grieve, we are expected to go back to normal. if we show too much reaction, too much emotion — or if we show not enough — then we have “failed.”

i was reminded in our first class two weeks ago of my grandfather’s memorial. my whole family attended, of course: me and my parents and brothers and aunts and uncles and all the cousins. usually when the whole family gets together like this, it’s christmas, or easter, or someone’s graduation, or someone’s birthday. usually it’s a time of celebration. so maybe it makes sense, then, that all the cousins were sort of triggered, in a sense, into that mindset, all being together again. at the wake we stood in a line, mostly in age order, as people came into the funeral home, processed around, looked at my grandfather in the casket, and then passed us on their way out and said, one by one, to my grandfather’s five adult children, their spouses, and their kids, us, we’re so sorry for your loss, we’re so sorry, we’re so sorry. and i appreciated it. my grandfather was a pediatrician. a lot of the people who came were probably his patients, or his patients’ children who were now themselves his patients, or his patients’ grandchildren who were now themselves his patients. he was a committed catholic; perhaps some members of his church attended. i’m sure many people, who i had never met before in my life and will never meet again, were grieving.

for our part, by the second or third hour of this standing and shaking hands and saying thank you, thank you, thank you, the cousins were a bit…bored. tired. looking at each other like, how many people are coming. and the siblings started to bug each other, and one of us started commenting on what the endless stream of mourners were wearing, and one cousin leaned over to the refreshments table and made a remark about how some of these people might only be here for the free food. and another one of us said oh my God look, they’ve eaten all the food. and another said dammit, i’m hungry. and another said, i kinda want chicken wings. and so a few of the youngest generation of the family, including at least one of my brothers, slipped out of the wake and went to go get chicken wings.

and on the surface this might strike us as absurd. disrespectful. how could you leave your grandfather’s wake to go get chicken wings. but we were young, middle and high school and college, and we were used to playing and joking with each other. we grew up only seeing each other at our grandparents’ house, where we would go down into the basement and play pool or out to the front yard to play baseball or open presents from the stockings that our grandmother had made for each of us. and now we were together, for the first time, in a place where we weren’t supposed to do any of that. but we weren’t used to it. we were used being abandoned at the kid’s table in the kitchen and teasing each other until one of us cried. so how were we supposed to just stand still, in the same room as the body of our grandfather, for hours and hours on end?

the rituals are there to comfort us. as catholics we believe in life after death, and we believe in respecting the body of those who have died, and we believe that just because someone is gone to us they are not gone forever. we will see them again someday, when we embrace each other again and when we are embraced together in the fold of God’s love. and yet this does not mean that the loss in the earthly realm still does not hurt. it does not mean that we can’t still mourn the lack of physical presence where there once was. so we come together, as a family, a community, a people of faith, to remind each other that our lost loved one is not alone in death, and neither are we in life. the rituals are there to comfort us. and we are there to comfort each other.

joy in grief. oxymoronic. not socially acceptable. outside the bounds of normal bereavement. and yet, what is the purpose of grief if not to lead us to something new? the main theme of the grief and loss class that i am taking is meaning-making. we found meaning at the memorial, in each others’ company, and in sharing a meal together, even if it was just chicken wings. and even if it was, technically, when we were kind of supposed to be at the wake.

anger in grief. perhaps not oxymoronic, but perhaps still a bit socially unacceptable. my grandfather died in 2017; his wife my grandmother died in 2020, after struggling with dementia and covid-19. as she sat in her nursing home and my dad and his siblings had to take turns deciding who would be able to see her once a week, people protested the very idea of wearing masks or getting a vaccine. did none of those people know anyone in their life who had gotten sick? did none of those people have a loved one who had died from this disease? did they know how many people were dying? did they simply not care?

my whole family came together again, months after my grandmother’s passing. it had to be months; we had to wait for restrictions to ease ever so slightly so that we could all, donning masks, go into the funeral home once again. no big wake this time, no stream of mourners for my grandmother, no endless line of patients or clients who remembered and loved her, she was a nurse and case manager. her own nurse who had come with her to all the family gatherings before she died was one of the only non-family members allowed to attend. why did my grandmother not get the same outpouring of love that my grandfather did? she deserved it no less; there were no less people who cared about her, who were touched by her. but now was not the time to think of such matters, or to dwell on the past, or to talk about politics. don’t bring such emotions into this sacred space; now we can just be happy that she is at peace, that she is reunited with her husband and with her God. no need to dwell, no need to dwell.

no chicken wings this time. but we did have a family meal at my uncle’s house. no one brought up covid. no one brought up the arguments among her children at the end of her life about the best method of care. we didn’t need to. it wasn’t the time. but when would the time be? we did the rituals. we had a small wake and we had a small funeral and we buried her and then we went back to our lives. and we were sad, of course, we had lost a mother and grandmother and aunt and patient and friend and loved one, but we shouldn’t dwell on it, really, we shouldn’t spend too much time thinking about it, we shouldn’t let it get in the way of our responsibilities. so when do we get to talk about it? when do we get to talk about any of it? when do we get to talk about the anger? when do we get to talk about the grief?

a lot of things are grief. many people think grief is just about death. it certainly can be; perhaps it most often is. but i think a lot of things that people don’t realize are grief are grief. i have come to consider that whenever i am angry, i think there is a hint of grief in it. i grieve a righteousness, a way of and respect for life, an order of God’s beloved creation that is so profoundly disordered. i am angered when human beings are disregarded, like when my grandmother was so callously disregarded by the protestors and politicians who downplayed and continue to downplay covid. and in this anger, i grieve the loss of human dignity as well as the hardening of the heart of humankind. i read today about a bill that slashes medicaid for over 17 million americans. i read today about a concentration camp being built on american soil, reminiscent of the japanese internment camps of wwii or the boarding schools that stripped identities and lives from countless indigenous children. i read about the open-air prison of gaza, about the catholic community under threat from the constant israeli bombs and the fact that 55,000 dead and 127,000 wounded in under two years is most likely a severe under-count. i read about the legal and medical protections and lifelines being stripped from our transgender siblings; i read about the brain-dead woman whose sacred body was desecrated in georgia in order to incubate a fetus until she started to rot in her hospital-bed-grave. and i am reminded of theologian james cone’s extensive work on the value of anger, especially in the face of injustice — this is a righteous anger, an anger that spurred prophets and martyrs; this is a Godlike anger, and it is a Godlike grief. “go and say this to the people,” God tells isaiah: tell them to “keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand” — tell them, says God, “until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate” (isaiah 6:9; 11). speak to them and speak to them fruitlessly, God tells one of history’s greatest prophets — go, prophesy, but know that the people will close their ears, will turn their backs. they will run themselves into the ground, they will ruin themselves before they hear the word of the One who created them, who loves them, who longs to hold them to Oneself and comfort them, because the word is telling them that they are wrong. and instead of heeding, they turn on each other, and they turn on God, while at the same time holding their hands out to God, attempting to placate God with festivals, and rituals, and offerings. God rejects this. God is angry. no, says God: “when you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood” (isaiah 1:15). know, God tells us, that I know, that your platitudes are not enough: not as you reach out to offer them with blood-stained hands.

God grieves the blood. God grieves the injustice that shed it. and in that grief, God shows us anger. who are we to say that grief and anger are antonyms? who are we to say that anger in grief is meaningless? it can only be meaningless if we do not give it its due. if we push it down, ignore it, attempt to pathologize it away. if we disregard it because it is not how we “should” grieve. if we say that now is not the time to be angry. but if we are not to be angry in grieving the death of justice, then what is the point of our human hearts?