The starting point of healing is to be mindful of our wounds… and what these wounds have cost us.
By Regina Chow Trammel
It felt like a chore. I was already tired. After the twenty-minute drive to drop my son off at Wednesday night youth group, I trudged on for at least another ten minutes, through a maze of crowded streets near the northeast side of Los Angeles to my grandmother’s townhouse.
When I arrived, I turned on the hazard lights and honked my horn, signaling my arrival. I hoped she would be quicker this time. Last time, a car behind me angrily honked his horn, because I was blocking the driveway waiting for her. “Kuài yī diǎn, Grandma!” I urged her forward, offering out my arm to steady her steps when she arrived at the door.
My grandmother would always refuse my arm, correcting me in Mandarin, saying she didn't need my help—her independent, stubborn streak always at the ready. Shoving dishes at me, she pushed me forward, both of us eager to get to my parents’ house so we could devour what she’d made: tofu skin wraps filled with pickled mustard greens, Szechuan peppercorn marinated chicken (also poached and salted for hours before cooked), beef-tendon stew with shiitake mushrooms. I’d load up my SUV with the dishes, buckled her in, and then off we drove to my parents’ home nearby.
On the drive over, my 93-year-old grandmother and I struggled to converse. She, a woman of a rich history, able to speak Shanghainese, Mandarin, and Cantonese, often mixed all three languages in one sentence. I, an ABC (American-born Chinese) can barely keep up with one dialect, let alone all three. We mainly resorted to saying “I love you” and smiling together—simply being happy to see each other.
Each Wednesday, my grandmother and I shared a meal with my parents. While my son was at youth group, worshiping God, I was fellowshipping at the dinner table filled with dishes I grew up with—dishes my grandmother spent the last two days and nights preparing. My prayers of thanks were joyful. “Thank you so much, God, for these dishes!” My parents and I would gobble what my grandmother made, all of us so grateful for her mastery of the complicated Chinese meals that spanned regions and time periods of her life. My grandmother would watch and smile. Around this dinner table were three generations, and therefore three different stories of how immigration has knitted our family together. Hard of hearing, she clearly saw how we devoured every bite. We ate and caught each other up on how our weeks had gone, with my mom often translating when my grandmother and I couldn’t understand each other. We did this together until it was time to pick up my son.
When it was that time, we gathered up all the empty dishes, waved goodbye to my parents, and my grandmother would accompany me to pick up my eldest son, the fourth generation in her line. He has been learning Mandarin, so I, the pushy mother, would nudge him, and he would quickly fall in line, understanding his role in the generational hierarchy. My eldest would show respect by opening her side of the car door, giving her a hug, greeting her in Mandarin, “Tái po, nǐ hǎo?” My grandmother, with a big wide smile, would answer in English, “Very good, you’re so handsome.” And then I drove her home, with my son in tow.
Then the pandemic hit. No more Wednesday night youth groups, no more dinner gatherings. The weekly Wednesday night gathering, that sometimes felt like a chore, is now a sacred memory and a praise to God for giving me such a loving family. The drives I complained about, I now long to make. Before the pandemic, my husband would encourage me to go, reminding me that I would look back on those Wednesday nights one day and treasure those times with her, and my parents and son. He knew I would someday miss those Wednesday nights because of her age—although he had not foreseen a pandemic.
As she advances in years, and as we have now been largely separated to protect her health, I lament each Wednesday night that could be and each Wednesday night that was until the pandemic. I find that the practice of lament is also an acknowledgement of pain. As a therapist and professor, I often urge my clients and students alike that the starting point of healing is to be mindful of our wounds, to speak about them and be mindful of what these wounds have cost us. In my case, the wound of separation from my weekly family gathering is an acknowledgement of the feelings of loss that I have only recently begun to recognize. I am mindful that the weariness of being apart is taking a toll on me. I have relied on Wednesday nights more than I realized—now that they are no more, for a period of time, in order to keep everyone healthy and safe.
My lament of Wednesday nights is, thus, giving voice to this acute sense of time being lost; I am more and more mindful that we are but dust (Psalm 103:14). The pandemic has been stealing time from all of us, and I have lost much of that precious resource this past year. And there was more to the meals together than just the eating. I feasted on a banquet of belonging, of identity, and of history. Around the table were my elders, my parents, my wisdom-carriers—these times and experiences are not replaceable. And so I lament.
Dr. Marsha Fowler my research mentor, a colleague, and friend, educated me about the purpose and structure of lament, which begins with a healthy expression of suffering, and a cry for help. So, my lament begins: “Oh Lord, I cry out. This pandemic is keeping my family apart. I am sad I cannot see them when I want. I feel more alone without my grandmother, my parents, my elders.”
In the days leading up to the Lunar New Year, news of anti-Asian violence against our elders made my lament feel even more urgent. Dr. Fowler writes, “A lament requires the courage to name one’s fears and vulnerabilities, to unmask social ills and concerns, and to do so within a society or culture that does not support this. A lament is a form of protest that enables the naming of what is tragic, fearful, damaging, wrong, unjust, angering, and more.” My lament protests the way our pandemic has not been controlled in our country, and how my grandma, my parents, my children, and I are possibly seen as outsiders to this American version of the pandemic. Echoes of “China virus” still reverberate in my mind. I pray and ask God, “Why is my community blamed for such a virus? Why is this happening to us, O Lord?”
Behind these questions in my lament is an underlying wound that this season of pandemic has revealed, which is that, we citizens of this country—all four generations of us—are potentially blamed for what we ourselves are enduring in this season of pandemic. However, I lament this wound in order to thrive. The strength of my family’s four generations is in the togetherness we share; our family bonds are what help us feel we belong, and we draw on that belonging in order to move about with faith, and in strength, and in the joy of the Lord. There is truly a preciousness to this—that we are truly blessed to be together, that in my family, there are still four generations of us living, cooking, gathering, and feasting together. Thus, as I follow Dr. Fowler’s teaching on lament, I pray on to thrive. And, in Christ, I know I am not left without hope because what flows is a trust in God’s love for us and his abiding presence in my family’s lives. The last part of my lament ends with this hope and identifies how God will bring us back:
“I know that you hear my prayers of salvation for my family—for their health and spirit-care. Please continue to keep them in your care. Speak loudly to them your kind words of love, so they can hear you alive in their lives. It is only by your strength and your presence that we can endure. Help preserve our lives and allow us to thrive. When this pandemic is over, I know we will resume our Wednesday nights. Let those nights come to fruition quickly, God! I will be racing over to sit down at the table again, each Wednesday night.”
Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash
Regina Chow Trammel, Ph.D., LCSW, is an associate professor of Social Work at Azusa Pacific University. She has spent more than a decade in private practice in the Chicago area, as well as experience in psychiatric and medical social work settings. She is an avid mindfulness practitioner, has academic research publications on Christian mindfulness, a popular TEDx talk on mindfulness, and has a forthcoming book on Christian mindfulness with Zondervan, releasing in Fall of 2021. You can follow her on Instagram.