In April’s The Atlantic, playwright and essayist Sarah Ruhl wrote about the funeral for her father-in-law, attended remotely in the time of COVID-19 via Zoom. She spoke of rituals and being a “bystander to grief.” What especially resonated was the notion that “ritual conjures the invisible.” The only place, Ruhl said, we can practice ritual now is from home while in exile. The invisible, though, is lost.
I believe every family line has had, or will have, a sacrifice generation. My parents, fourth-generation Irish Americans, have Midwestern, blue-collar roots. My mother grew up on a farm in rural Missouri and went into food service after high school. Mom is now a cafeteria worker at a local school district. With no retirement to speak of, she says she’ll work until she dies. My dad held several jobs, from roofer to bricklayer, working days, evenings, overnights and weekends. At the height of his career, he was a proud lithographer and printer, until the 1990s when the digital revolution put an end to that line of work. Later, my parents took out a second mortgage on their house to open a barbeque restaurant the week the 2008 financial crisis started. That lasted a few years until they filed for bankruptcy. Dad is now a janitor for a local school district. With no retirement to speak of, he also says he’ll work until he dies. I take their sacrifices to heart.
