Photo by Katherine Hanlon on Unsplash
The present must become the past.
Someone deeply beloved—whom we long to have continue with us now and into the future—won’t.
Transitioning our beloved from our present to our past is the essence of the grieving process.
Funerals and memorial services are an essential ritual in the early days of that transition.
Telling stories, singing hymns, cooking the deceased’s favorite foods, and hearing the story of their life placed in the longer narrative of God’s eternal life—all help us process our beloved’s absence.
We need to have validated the incomprehensible truth that our beloved has died. We need others to acknowledge the pain of our shared story’s conclusion.
Togetherness helps. Communal remembrance helps. Hugs help.
In the absence of traditional funerals and memorial services, how can we help those in mourning grieve well? What kinds of rituals and ceremonies can we create to help the grieving in the absence of in-person gatherings?
As usual, it’s best to start at the beginning.
1. Listen & Validate
Just as we do during “normal” times, listen to the bereaved tell the stories.
It’s going to help to validate that this is an extra-difficult loss because of the pandemic, whether the deceased is a victim of COVID-19 or not.
Decisions may be harder to make. Emotions may be rawer and closer to the surface than they would have a few months ago. Financial decisions about the service or insurance may be more challenging. Logistics around the body—transportation, cremation, or burial—may be more complicated.
The grief needs to be acknowledged, validated, and corporately observed without comparison.
That is, this person’s grief can’t be set alongside others’ pain. Not set alongside those who have it “worse” right now. Not made to feel it’s too much to ask others to “make a fuss” because their own plates are so full of troubles during the pandemic.
This is especially true for those whose grief is already dismissed routinely by our culture.
Under-represented populations, the economically vulnerable, and the elderly who “could expect” their beloved spouse to die, are at particular risk of having their feelings dismissed or minimized, marginalized as they are.
Grief is grief, unique to the one who experiences it.
Listen—for as long as it takes and as many times as it takes—to the bereaved describe the nuances, proportions, and characteristics of their grief, and allow them to lay claim to whatever they need to get through the next days.
Acknowledge their pain in all its facets.
2. Discover what is Most important to the Bereaved in a service
Ask what a funeral means to the grieving. What matters most about it?
For example, does it matter most:
to follow the deceased’s burial wishes as closely as possible?
that family, friends, and the church community participate?
that there is music, Scripture, or Eucharist?
Or might it be the need to swap stories late into the night with those who knew the deceased?
In addition, how do the grieving feel about a service at this time under these circumstances?
That is, do the grieving want this ritual to be the only ritual, or do they see it as a stop-gap until people can gather in person again? If they don’t know, are they okay not deciding?
As best you can, ask questions to help the bereaved tap into their “vision” of what this ritual should look like.
Then translate the elements of that vision into your virtual format.
Asking good questions and listening intently to the responses will help you craft a liturgy specific to the needs of the grieving, offering them the best comfort possible in the circumstances.
3. Honor the Sacred as You Plan
Even if the bereaved see this ritual as a “stop-gap,” it’s important we, as the worship leaders, see this as a ritual unto itself and maintain its integrity as a “real” service.
Consider, for example, that in many of our traditions, the Burial Office can conclude after the Liturgy of the Word and Commendation.
It can also continue on and conclude after the Eucharist.
It can also continue on, and conclude with the Committal at the graveside.
The Committal with the internment of ashes can also occur months later.
Even with so many options and parts, each portion of the Burial Office holds its own integrity.
No part is “less than” without the other parts, and without the other parts can be just as meaningful to the bereaved.
If we craft a ritual with integrity, it will feel “real” and “valid” even if it is followed with another service later on.
On the other hand, if we see this as a poor substitute for the real thing, it will further complicate and compound the grief.
Even though this ritual will be born of necessity, it can also be a deeply and surprisingly meaningful service unto itself.
Using what the bereaved told you about what the service means to them, incorporate those wishes to craft a service that speaks to the hearts and souls of the grieving.
Create the service bulletin and let the bereaved post it where they will.
In addition, just as people would take part in a traditional service, let people take part now.
Record or live-stream people reading Scripture, sharing a musical solo, or offering a eulogy.
Live-stream a service from the church or cemetery, while following proper social distancing. All that’s needed is one person with a smart phone.
Record a service privately to be shown to close family members soon after the service, or at any time in the future, perhaps at a more public, larger service later on when people can gather again.
Hold a private service in the family home, live-streamed or recorded.
Ask loved ones to record themselves telling stories about the deceased. These could be spliced together into a playlist and shared.
Dedicate a social media page to receive condolences. Keep in mind, however, a page filled with “thinking of you,” and “thoughts and prayers are with you” sentiments without a sense of meaning or authenticity behind them, without specific stories, may leave the bereaved feeling more isolated. Directions need to be given to remind contributors they are supporting those who grieve: what would they want to hear if it were they who grieved?
What Would You Add?
Since this kind of memorialization is new and we’re learning together, I’d love to hear what you’ve discovered. My plan is to share your crowd-sourced ideas in a post in a couple of weeks.
Write to me at lisa@backstorypreaching.com to let me know how you’ve conducted burial offices so far. What has been helpful? What mistakes would you hope to spare your colleagues?
Next week, I’ll be sharing a conversation with Sr. Miriam Elizabeth Bledsoe, OSH, whose mother died not long after sheltering-in-place started, and The Rev’d Jim Said, who planned and conducted the memorial service.
We’ll be talking about how they planned the service, Sr. Bledoe’s experience of the serves as one who grieved, and what they’d recommend to others. I think you’ll find it helpful.
Understanding our Communal Grief & Its Wake of harm
Partisanship. Denial. Bolder displays of -isms.
Much of the national disfunction we’ve seen in the last few years is a symptom of something deeper.
In my new book, The Gospel People Don’t Want to Hear: Preaching Challenging Messages, I argue that this “something deeper” is actually grief.
Long before COVID-19 brought visceral grief to the surface of our national life, we were reckoning with invisible grief at subconscious levels.
What were/are we grieving?
How does this grief manifest itself?
How can preachers recognize it in their congregations?
What are its implications?
And how do we preach into a grief that is largely unspoken and unacknowledged?
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“In a time of division and heightened rhetoric, the task of preaching can seem perilous, especially preaching on sensitive and challenging issues. Lisa Cressman...creatively describes a way of preaching that is prophetically faithful and an act of deep pastoral care.”