For Whom the Bells Tolled

Can unity be found in our collective mourning for what we've lost?

On the eve of their inauguration, as a brilliant winter day gave way to dusk and then darkness, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris gazed at the 400 obelisks of light mirrored in the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool, each one representing at least 1,000 people who have died in this country from the Covid-19 virus.

At the same moment, across the nation, thousands of Americans gathered at churches, monuments and local landmarks to join this national moment of mourning by ringing bells, lighting candles, whispering the names of the dead and sending silent prayers to those left behind.

At the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Sarasota, a small group of congregants gathered near the labyrinth at the back of the church property. At a signal from musical minister Greg Chestnut, they pulsed, with a forward motion, the hand chimes he’d distributed, as if striking a blow with a hammer or casting a fishing rod.

Congregants at the First Congregational Church of Christ in Sarasota joined a national moment of mourning Tuesday for the victims of Covid-19 by striking hand chimes and speaking the names of the dead with whom they had a personal connection.

As the air filled with an unharmonious but not unpleasant melody that overlapped, vibrated and hummed, I imagined each note struck as the last breath of someone who had died, and each reverberation as a widening circle of pain as news of the loss radiated to everyone that person had known over a lifetime. Long after Pastor Wes Bixby signaled for the chimes to stop, the fading echoes hauntingly lingered.

There is no one whose life has not been altered over the past year and no one who has not felt robbed in some way — if not of a loved one than of a sense of security, stability, health, optimism or hope. After nearly a year of turmoil, trauma and tribulation, brought on both by the pandemic and our state of political unrest, the aggregate weight of this grief felt overpowering.

But the cumulative lamentation also seemed, for once, to take us beyond politics or perspectives, color or credo or culture. It brought us face to face with what it is to be human, no matter what we believe in or where we come from.

Life, death, love, loss. It doesn’t get much more elemental than that.

Unlike those who couldn’t see their loved ones before they died, nor honor them with traditional funerals or memorials, this moment of collective grieving and the inaugural ceremony the next day provided something many of us have been craving, maybe even without realizing it. Whether we are worn, weary, impatient or irritated, it delivered a tantalizing a whiff of what Biden called “that most elusive of all things in a democracy — unity.”

On this inauguration day, the National Mall, normally packed with a congested crowd hailing a new national leader, was, due to security measures, peculiarly spartan and vacant. In place of the usual cheering throngs, I imagined the silent and invisible presence of those 400,000 souls no longer with us.

They, of course, can’t heed the challenge in Biden’s inaugural speech to “come together enough to carry all of us forward.” But, if we choose to, we can.

So when the solemn oaths, the stirring speeches, the magnificent poetry and poignant prayers were over, all that was left was to do what all mourners must. Sobered by our sorrows, humbled by our responsibilities, bolstered by our beliefs, we turn our gaze away from the past and move on.