Procession of Keeners

This morning, I was greeted by a funeral procession, of lamenting, wailing women.

There with its welcoming wild permission.

Hips sway side to side, arms and hands surrendered to the air.

Clanging cymbals on the tongue.

Then they turn to prostrate before the primary griever.

All bow to the most sad one. The one with the heaviest heart.

I’m not sure I fully understood until I started having this dream memory, what a gift this experience was.

Our family is Arabic. Christian orthodox. But our extended friend community is every religion.

It was strange after Tanner died. I first saw the faces of my white family. Hollowed out like ghosts. I could see the searching terror in their eyes reflecting me back to me. They stood silently screaming inside in my presence. As if they’d been stunned. No one really moving. No motion. I knew, that’s how I must look.

The following morning, after his death, I had a cardiac event and had to go to the ER. When I arrived home, the Arabic contingent had arrived, and would continue to fill in throughout the day.

As I made my way up the front stairs of my house, I was flanked on either side by women in full on displays of grief.

Howling.

Grabbing at me.

Grabbing at each other.

Speaking to God, mumbling prayers.

Their bodies large with movement and expression.

With life.

It’s what I had needed. I remember how much permission was inside the keening ritual of the women who came mourn Tanner.

The warmth and love and care.

Their feral, wild, organic, guttural, expressions of loss.

Giving me (and all of us who gathered) permission to go as deeply as I needed to go, while surrounded by some of the most capable people to hold and tend to me on the planet.

The juxtaposition between us (sometimes) very buttoned up white women. And the BIG LOVE the Middle East sows into one’s blood.

It’s a love that interferes, it moves across boundaries, it assumes you need it and it slathers it on thick. Endless tea, and sweets, and sitting. It’s a love that knows it mirrors. It’s keenly aware of facial expressions. That the loss you carry should be mirrored in how they greet you.

It’s a BIG, INTELLIGENT, love from a social perspective.

And I’ve always admired how unashamed and unabashed it is.

This morning, I awoke to the procession again.

My body needing a gigantic release. Grief, stress, pressure, pain. Just needing to sigh and have space.

Each time I dream of the keening ritual, I am humbled by its beauty, reminded how loved Tanner was, and how connected I am.

But even more than that, I’m reminded of the BIGNESS. The gigantic expression of these full bodied, open hearted woman. How large their love is. How unhindered their permission for any kind of emotion inside of death, grief, loss, and longing.

And how it freed me up, to have grief on my terms. As big, and loud, and strange, and guttural, as I need.