Mourning the Fallout of COVID-19

What are you mourning as our world walks through the current pandemic? There is certainly loss of life to be mourned. Hundreds of thousands of people, fellow human beings from all races and walks of life, have perished because of something completely out of our control. To that end, the lack of control—or should I say our coming face to face with our ever-present lack of control—is something to be mourned. We want so badly to be the “masters of our fate, the captains of our souls.” But what we’re faced with every single day is that’s just not true. Perhaps there are some things we can shape, there are tiny semblances of control, but ultimately we don’t have a say in how this spreads or how we can fight it.

I have mourned, and still mourn, the loss of life that COVID-19 has wrought upon our planet. Whatever the numbers or how they compare to other diseases or the age range of the people who have died or what their politics were or how they caught the virus, death is death. Peoples’ mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, grandpas, and grandmas, friends, neighbors, good people, bad people, happy people, sad people, old people, young people…all of them are being mourned and missed right now. 

I mourn that I haven’t been able to worship in the same building with my church community since early March. People that I love, whom I have been called to serve, people who I have laughed with, cried with, learned with, sung with, played with, shared meals with sudden feel a million miles away. And while we have found ways to connect and maintain some semblance of community, communicating over distance through a screen is a poor substitute for a handshake or a hug for real connection. I like to refer to myself as a high-functioning introvert, so I wasn’t at all intimidated by the thought of a long-term lockdown (I believe my exact phrase was, “Self-isolation? Here, hold my beer…”). So, for me to say I miss my people is really saying something.

I mourn the division this has caused, or rather the division this has exacerbated. It seemed that unity in our country was already tenuous at best before the coronavirus hit our shores. But as our response to the epidemic has floundered, so has any hope of forming a unified front and facing our invisible adversary as a community. Political and social divides have deepened as no one can agree on what is best for our nation, states, and cities. Even communities of faith can’t form a consensus when it comes to the reemergence of our congregations from quarantine. This disunity, these disagreements have been going on for some time. The current pandemic is simply shining a rather unpleasant spotlight on all of it. And it weighs heavy on my heart. 

I mourn what our pursuit of money and financial security has turned us into, not to mention what it has caused us to turn to. As arguments rage about reopening our cities and getting businesses back up and running, the conversation has revealed what our world has become—we are no longer an interconnected network of communities, dependent on one another for sustaining our planet. We have become a network of economies dependent on the buying and selling of things to keep the system flush with cash, to keep the unrelenting and insatiable wheels of capitalism turning, to maintain the proper balance of scarcity that drives the free market; just enough scarcity so we know what we’re lacking but not so much that we begin to realize what we can live without. 

I mourn that seeing red on a balance sheet has become more alarming than hearing that over 300,000 people have died in just a few months. I mourn that there are people in our nation who are so hellbent on exercising their “rights” that they have all but lost their sense of responsibility to the “other,” to care for the vulnerable and defenseless. I mourn that patience and prudence have been sacrificed on the altar of patriotism—and I mourn that this is nothing new. 

I mourn the disinformation that drives people away from truth into the arms of fear, whether that is the fear of losing your business, the fear of the government telling you you can’t get a haircut or eat in a restaurant whenever you want, or fear of losing your life simply because you breathed the same air as someone in your office who had the sniffles back in February. I mourn how difficult it is to find truth, rationality, and clarity.

I mourn that I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to make it better. I don’t know how to fix it. And that, I believe, is at the heart of many of the negative responses we’ve seen, or perhaps even experienced personally. It is when we feel we’ve lost control (or what Americans might call “freedom”) that protesting, fully armed, outside of state capitol buildings seems like a good way to try and fix the problem. When we’re faced with uncertainty, we find other people to take our emotions out upon. We see grocery store employees being berated by shoppers because there’s no bacon on the shelves as a way to cling to the tiniest scraps of control, disguised as an expression of your rights as an American. 

If you think I’m pointing fingers or being overly political, that is not my intent. While I do feel that our political responses to this crisis have caused more division than necessary, and our political leaders have dropped the ball and let our nation down, my own desire for control and certainty, along with my frustration about having my “normal” life and schedule interrupted, is often expressed through my impatience with a nearly-four-year-old daughter whose preschool closed back in mid-March. She doesn’t understand why she can’t see her classmates or her friends or her cousins or her grandparents, or why there is police “CAUTION” tape around her favorite playgrounds. 

I have no answers that will satisfy her daily questioning, so I control the situation by turning on Netflix or handing her an iPad so I can have a moment’s peace and put off unloading and reloading the dishwasher for another hour (or for a few days). I don’t get to stand on any kind of moral high ground simply because I haven’t yelled at a store manager for asking me to wear a mask or took to the streets demanding my favorite barber be allowed to open his shop back up. I’ve found plenty of ways to take this out on others in an attempt to wrest any semblance of normalcy and certainty from a very uncertain situation.

Lastly, I mourn that I don’t have any words of wisdom for anyone. I’m simply mourning right now. I am grateful that there are people who are working hard to make our world a safe place for everyone, even if I don’t always agree with how they’re doing it. I’m not going to be one of those good Christian leaders who tells you not to waste this time because Lord knows I have. I guess if I’m saying anything it would be that it is ok to mourn, but let’s be prudent, patient, and gracious in how we express it. Tell someone you’re sad if you’re sad. Tell someone you’re angry if you’re angry. You’re not the only one. Find people you can Zoom or FaceTime or Google Meet with, recognizing that it shouldn’t be this way, but also reminding one another that it won’t be this way forever. 

Binge-watch “Tiger King.” Drink a bottle of wine and fall asleep on the couch. Mourn our collective loss of control, and then mourn the realization that we never really had any control to begin with. Hug your kids, even when they’re jumping up and down on your last nerve. Get up in the morning and watch the sun come up, because it will. It has every day, so far. Wear a silly hat to your video staff meeting and look at everyone’s smiles. Be patient with the people who are serving us at great cost to their own health and security. Be grateful. Be human. You can’t fix this, and no one expects you to. That’s the closest I’ll get to offering wisdom. Now, I’m off to watch Deadliest Catch on the DVR with my wife. Or maybe unload the dishwasher…