Grieving America
A Ceremony for Healing from Covid-19 ( 2020)
written and produced by Sally Brucker and April Thompson Miller, certified life-cycle celebrants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Description
The pre-recorded community ceremony Grieving America (2020) was created by Sally Brucker and April Miller, both certified life-cycle celebrants, as a response to the need for a collective way to mourn the deaths of fellow Americans to COVID-19. Moved by visiting the art installation, In America How Could This Happen, by Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg in Washington, D.C., Brucker and Miller sought to use technology as a means to offer a non-denominational community ceremony for anyone in grief, in order to remember, to speak, to sing and to be silent, as in a funeral.
They created a ceremony that found a way of taking the broken fragments within and speaking a ‘language’ that would bridge individual and collective experiences
Sally Brucker and April Miller brought together local poets and members of an online Facebook grief group who generously shared their work and stories. Local videographer Bryant Strange filmed and edited the montage of readings, music, poetry, and images to create this recorded community ceremony offering for all.
Brucker and Miller hope that those watching this will experience a strong connection to their loved ones lost to COVID-19. They also hope that it will bring their lived experiences to the light and offer comfort and a space to grieve, in both personal and communal ways.
When the ceremony was first released the ceremony, they stated :
America is losing lives to COVID-19 at an unprecedented number, often hard to fathom as they rise now to over 300,000+
Now, halfway through 2021, we have lost over 600,000 and, despite the rate of vaccinations and lifting of mask restrictions, with the new more deadly Delta Variant of Covid-19, we are still short of herd immunity and in danger of prolonging this outbreak with even more human suffering and needless, avoidable death.
Persons afflicted with Covid may still die insulation, with no loved ones to comfort them or say goodbye. Family members and friends are often left to grieve alone, complicating and stifling their grieving process. Around the world, we see communities and countries grappling with suffering and death on an unfathomable scale.