Loss, Grief, & Hope

I am at a loss for words. Not because I don’t have them, but because I feel like I have said them. Time and time and time again – and we continue to come back to this moment. The horror of aggression and death thrust upon us, upon our children – and I say our because, as a father, I know how much, how deeply, how powerfully I love my littles – and so I feel a bond with all parents who love their children, and a feel of grief and despair of loss.

Picture the one(s) you hold most dear. You hug them this morning. Or perhaps you didn’t and will forever regret that. Perhaps you rushed them because they slept late, didn’t finish their homework, asked for the extra bowl of cereal. This is the last memory you will have with them because they have been taken. You sent them to a sanctuary, to a place of growth and nurturing – to a home away from home where the least safe they should feel is when their grade on the latest quiz perhaps didn’t meet what they were hoping. And, instead of them coming home to tell you about their day (or give you a monosyllabic grunt that it was ‘ok’ and they did ‘stuff’ until you entreat it out of them) they don’t come home. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever again. What do you do with that hole? Because it is a hole – an emptiness of space, of clothes never to be worn again, of college funds saved never to be invested for their future, of pictures and videos of birthday parties that will be the final word on their smile and their laugh. It is a hole in your life. In your family’s life. In your community’s life. In our world’s.

I don’t know the words to say to be able to say this won’t happen again. I am lucky to be able to hug my littles a little tighter – lucky compared to families in Texas, in New York, in so many places tonight – and, yet, I still have to send them to school tomorrow with less security, with increased worry and anxiety, with wondering if this is the day it happens here.

This is what I do know and see. We have, as a society, had our echo chambers make us deaf to anything and anyone who does not fit in with our news streams, our expectations, our points of view. Once, someone with a different approach and premise wasn’t an adversary, but a teacher and potential partner, if we could trust we were headed to the same destination of a better world, society, community, life but had differentiated views on how to get there. Success, admiration – our picture of a leader – wasn’t the one with the loudest voice driving fear of ‘others’ but the ones who listened to many voices and tried to create a greater strength in the harmony amongst them. Compromise wasn’t a weakness. Listening & dialogue & discourse was the foundation of how we advanced, together.

We will not heal, we will not build a stronger tomorrow – we will not understand one another – until we design anew a priority of inquiry, of empathetic listening, of seeking agreement and strength in partnership rather than partisanship. Every time we have a national tragedy, we experience a shock (though this is waning), a grief, an outcry, and then blames. Many, many, many blames. And who we should be scared of. And who should be shunned. And who we should not listen to anymore. And who is wrong. And who is evil.

If we want hope, then that is what we have to ask, to seek, to question. Where can we find hope?

If we want safety & security, then we have to ask what we are willing to do for that safety & security – even if that means admitting things we don’t want to confront because they are too big and its easier to shift the blame.

If we want to stop the cycle of fear, then we have to stop elevating voices that thrive because they make us afraid – of others, of power, of each other.

I have no answers for the depths and dimensions of grief that is the loss of a child. That, of all things, is my innermost worst nightmare. But I know that the world I want to build for my children isn’t one premised on decisions fueled by fear. Instead, I want them to inherit a world that is curious about their point of view and where they are, in turn, curious about hearing others they may not have experienced. Where they can have dialogue around hard topics – but the dialogue isn’t argument of enemies but a process of designing greater understanding between potential partners.

I want there to be light. Joy. Hope. I want there to be hope.

These are the leaders we need right now. This is what we need to demand. Where do we, as a society, as an extended family, build a hopeful tomorrow? One where my depth of care for your children – and yours for mine – makes us set aside the rigidity for long-held belief in the face of possibility of the tomorrow they deserve.

I grieve. There is hollow. I worry. And, I seek to listen, and to find hope. ?

#loss #hope #future