On Lament
I heard it before I knew what it really was.
I was 13 and had just sat down in the rows next to my grandfather’s casket. My grandmother was directly in front of me, seemingly settled and waiting for her priest to begin the graveside service.
Without any warning or build-up, she let out a deep, heartbreaking wail, followed by a stream of choked out questions.
Why now?
How can this be?
I can’t do this.
I was absolutely stunned, embarrassed by her outburst and looking around to see what the adults were going to do about it. It dawned on me as she continued, at times louder than the priest, that there was nothing to be done.
Later that night as I tried to sleep, that first wail echoed all around me. I still felt a certain amount of threat from it, but the memory of my grandma’s pure emotion also, somewhere deep down inside, comforted me.
This was a big deal, a huge loss. Her sounds echoed what was simply true.
A year later, I learned what to call it on an SAT vocabulary practice test.
Lament.
The word lament has been haunting me all week long. Part of it is the extreme loss people I love dearly are enduring. Part of it is the anniversary of a devastating event with my estranged husband. Part of it is the seemingly never ending wind blowing, the power flickering, and ash falling reality of living in Southern California right now.
Most of it is feeling an avalanche of emotions about almost everything and not really knowing how to express them.
On Lament
There have been a handful of times in my life when I couldn’t stop the flood of lament, most of them just in the past two years.
Screaming. Crying. Moaning.
Sometimes, the noises escaping me without me really understanding what to do with it.
Obviously, lamenting the loss of my marriage and family. But also, a deeper, more threatening loss to lament.
I’ve thought a lot about whether or not I want to share this part of my story here. I know some of you actually knew me way back when all of this happened.
But lament is loud and it pours out what simply must be released.
I have decided to give in to it. Please, bear with me. I’m new to this whole lament thing.
In the same timeframe that my grandfather died, I was also a young and impressionable target of my high school debate coach. For all four years of high school, he groomed and manipulated me.
He called me every single night and we talked for hours on my new phone line, separate from my family.
He wrote me letters about life, including quotes from famous thinkers, not all that unlike what I do here.
He told me how to dress and wear my hair. He commented when I gained weight or had a pimple.
He wanted me to eat lunch in his classroom, instead of with my friends. If I dated, he wanted the boy to join the debate team, asking me for more and more details and then, worse, making me feel ashamed for wanting anything other than him.
He systematically isolated me from friends and family, telling me that I needed him most. If anyone questioned it, he told me and everyone else that I was a poor girl from a single parent home. I needed a father figure.
The way he spun it, he was saving me. That he was saving me even though I wasn’t worth saving.
I believed him.
The hallmark of this incredibly abusive dynamic was making me feel like I needed to work hard to be good enough for his attention and love – to repay him for all he was willing to do to help me.
“We’re going to have to let truth scream louder to our souls than the lies that have infected us.”
Beth Moore
I have come to realize that this set the tone for every other significant relationship in my life.
I specifically dated, and eventually married men that I was sure were better than I was. For the most part, intentionally or unintentionally, they reinforced that belief.
They came from loving, intact, warm families who had their lives together and never worried about having enough food or clothing for their children.
They were successful and had more money than I had ever seen in my life.
They were more religious and had a community of believers who loved them.
I had none of these things, and I thought I was less than because of it.
“Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”
Anne Lamott
Before my husband and I were married, his men’s group at church questioned his marrying a divorced woman, demanding that he cut it off, proclaiming that he was “in sin” because of me. It was quite the controversy at the time, and the message was clear from my husband and many around him – he was doing me a favor, sacrificing himself to marry me and care for my children.
He was saving me even though I wasn’t worth being saved.
I believed it. With every part of my soul, I believed that I needed to work hard to repay him, to be loved by him, and, worse still, that I was lucky for whatever scrap he decided to throw my way.
This is what I am working through right now. As I do, lament is welling up, begging to be free.
Did you know that in the time of Jesus, professional mourners were a thing?
They were typically women “skilled in the art of lamentation” – Lamentation as art.
This makes sense to me. The communal crying out for what is broken and so desperately painful. It does seem like art – messy, beautiful, heartbreaking art.
I wish I could hire a group of women right now to come to my house, to wail and grieve it all.
More than 35 years of trying so hard to be loved, to be married, to have a family of my own, all while being certain that I wasn’t worthy of any of it.
I lament the loss and the shame.
Here in these words, I cry out.
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