Sometimes I wish we still wore mourning armbands.  The kind Jimmy Stewart wears in It’s a Wonderful Life at the board meeting after his father dies.  That simple black band around the upper arm signaled to everyone else something was up.  Maybe you wouldn’t have known who had died when you saw a teacher at the school wearing one, but that signal would have prompted you to say, at least, “I’m sorry for your loss.” 

One of the strangest sensations for a mourner is the sense that the rest of the world can somehow keep turning and bustling while time stands still for her.  Absorbed by grief, routine questions like “Would you like room for cream in that?” can suddenly seem out of place and too normal to fit the terrain of her new world.  I wonder if having the stranger, the barista, say “I’m sorry for your loss…Would you like room for cream?” would help.  I wonder if that outward signal to others to make some room for mourning made those interactions less bizarre.

Death has come near several times this fall.  Not to my innermost circle but close enough – too close for comfort.  Three people cut down well before we expected.  I learned about two of the deaths online.  Distance and screens didn’t make them easier.  I’ve found it difficult to mourn, to know how to express feelings and connections not readily apparent to those in my daily, physical community.

Meanwhile the calendar turns.  Advent arrives.  Trees and decorations go up.  Special playlists serve as the seasonal soundtrack.  We cook dishes reserved for this time of year.  All those physical, sensual triggers that this is a different time now.

Like the mourning armband, reminding others – and the wearer herself – to make room for grief.  This is a different time now.

We rely on rituals to cue our behavior and mindset.  Sleep experts advise establishing and maintaining certain rituals, signals to your mind and body that it’s time to slow down and sleep.  Dark, quiet, cool room.  No screens for an hour before bed.  Same time every night…  Eventually your mind and body recognize the signals sent by the rituals so that brushing your teeth and turning off the screens starts you yawning.  Similar to the way listening to Christmas music while baking helps you get in the spirit of things.

What did we lose when we lost the mourning armbands?  Grief – an iceberg whose puny tip showed up as an armband for a few months – became even more hidden, less able to be shared.  More private, less communal.

Put yourself back in the coffee shop, in a hurry, preoccupied by your own agenda.  When the man in front of you fumbles for his wallet, appears spacey, takes too much time, and doesn’t know how to answer the cream question, how exasperated are you?  What if that man were wearing a simple black armband?  Would that give you the signal to go easy, make room, and let it be?  I suspect it would.  I imagine the odd relief the band would give its wearer, not having to explain anything out of the ordinary but also wearing a sign of his emotional and spiritual journey – literally – on his sleeve.  Exposed and protected by the same signal.

Advent and the incarnation it heralds proclaim the bold, unnerving story:  God lives here, too.  It’s not “out there” or “later” or “in spite of” this world and the bodies we inhabit.  The place of God’s revelation is in the midst of our lives and there is no place to hide but every place to be holy.  Exposed and protected by the same sign. 

Most of the year bodies are just bodies and time is just time.  Death reminds us that bodies are the only way we know one another, the only medium we have for encounter.  Advent proclaims time is not “just” anything.  It’s holy.  Permeated with the presence of God.  All those gingerbread-Baby-It’s Cold-Outside-fir-scented-purple-candles-lessons-and-carols-once-a-year signals to wait a minute.  Take it in, sense by sense, ritual by ritual.  Can’t you see?  Feel?  Taste?  Hear?  Real, sensual, physical signals – just the tip of the iceberg – reminding us to make room for the One who came into time, into a human body, and filled it with holiness.

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photo credit: Sunset Iceberg 2, CC / Free Cultural Works