With memorials, graduations and other ceremonies cancelled because of COVID, I went on a quest for new rituals

This First Person column is written by Kent Hoffman, a CBC Radio producer based in Toronto. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. 

When I got an unexpected message that February that a good friend of mine had died, 2020 was already starting to feel like a terrible year. Bob's death hit me hard. We were close when we were in college, but had lost touch over the years. I found myself full of regret. 

Not long after, the pandemic started. Soon we were all in lockdown. Thousands of  events were cancelled, including a planned memorial service for Bob. After that, everything seemed to go wrong. I soon learned that all the difficulties of life still continue to happen during a pandemic. 

But in the midst of seemingly relentless personal struggles, I knew I needed to look for ways to find hope. During difficult times, I often turn to rituals for comfort. To me, a ritual is any ceremonial act that I take part in and draw meaning from. 

Rituals offer me a sense of control, or at least create the illusion of it, during times of uncertainty. But in this case, that uncertainty created a problem. A lot of familiar rituals and ceremonies could no longer happen. 

For example, both my kids' graduation ceremonies were cancelled and wouldn't be rescheduled. A university and high school graduation were once-in-a-lifetime milestones that I'd imagined for as long as I'd been a parent.

I didn't know where to go with the disappointment of that, and thought it might be helpful to try to seek out some advice on how to bring back some of those ritual aspects of life again. 

I found someone named Megan Sheldon. She's the co-creator of Be Ceremonial, an app that helps people create ceremonies in connection with beginning of life and end of life experiences. Essentially, Megan helps people create their own rituals. 

She describes a ritual as, "an action with intention that creates meaning." That sounded exactly like what I was looking for, but I wasn't sure where to begin. 

"A ritual can be as simple as holding a moment of silence, if you do that with intention," Megan said. She urged anyone like me who might think that building an elaborate ritual feels like too much to just keep it fairly small. 

Megan emphasizes that it's that intentional aspect that really gives rituals their meaning. When planning your own, it can be useful to ask yourself how you want to feel when you look back on the ceremony, she said.  

Talking it over, I realized that the traditional ceremonies we're all familiar with are not any more significant than new rituals we come up with ourselves. Who's to say that a formal cap and gown ceremony is more meaningful than presenting your child with a special graduation gift and saying a few words of encouragement in your own backyard? 

Megan reminded me that building our own rituals can help us craft our own narrative. "You're forming a story in a sense," she said, "If we move through those times of change using ritual, they become an expression of our love, or our grief, or our frustration." 

With Bob's death never far from my mind, the connection between grief and gratitude came up a few times in my conversation with Megan. I don't think you can really understand gratitude until you really understand grief.

If we move through those times of change using ritual, they become an expression of our love, or our grief, or our frustration.- Megan Sheldon, co-creator of the Be Ceremonial app

I wanted to delve more into the role of grief in our lives, and got in touch with Stephen Jenkinson. He's the author of many books on the topic, including Die Wise and A Generation's Worth. 

I first learned about Stephen in a 2008 National Film Board documentary called Griefwalker. That film was a portrayal of his work with dying people and it had a profound impact on me. 

Stephen said the pandemic didn't merely prevent us from holding in-person memorials — it exposed our discomfort with the grieving process. "All that's happened, it seems to me, is we have a pandemic to blame for our grief illiteracy," he said. "And I'm suggesting by saying grief illiteracy, that grief has to be learned in order to be practiced."

Our need to learn how to grieve also extends to the way we approach rituals. "I would hold up the idea of ritual as something to aspire to rather than thinking of it as a can opener that suits your purposes," Stephen said.  

He says that grieving rituals offer a kind of "choreography so that you're not left to hatch out your own take on what grief is."

I was reassured by that idea but I still found myself lamenting the loss of some of that "choreography" — all the ceremonies and rituals that ended up being cancelled throughout the pandemic. 

I know grieving is about far more than eating funeral sandwiches in a church basement, but yet I almost found myself mourning the loss of those events. I felt a need for them as a tangible way to mark the death of my friend and other loved ones who have since passed. But, of course, just showing up at a memorial is not grieving. 

Stephen said that part of life is to "make meaning out of fundamental dislocations, fundamental disappointments, and ruptures. It doesn't mean that you have to be OK with it; it means that you give it its proper place." 

I'm starting to understand that finding the proper place for our losses, struggles, and disappointments might be where real hope and meaning can be found, too. I think that's why grief is so crucial.

Stephen Jenkinson said he believes grief gives us, "an unsuspected capacity for gratitude."

"Grief is the midwife of your capacity to love being alive. And ritual can hand that back to you as something you can actually act on, instead of just think about." 

My quest to find rituals turned out to be directly connected to learning how to grieve. It's the kind of learning that continues throughout our lives. I think what I've learned so far is that grief is not about moving past something, it's about beginning. 

Grief is the midwife of your capacity to love being alive. And ritual can hand that back to you as something you can actually act on, instead of just think about.- Stephen Jenkinson, author of

I hadn't stopped thinking about Bob, so I got in touch with Jeff and Joe, a couple good friends from those days who were also close to him. I hadn't seen them in ages. We still couldn't really meet up in person, but we met online because I didn't want to wait any longer. I had something I wanted to tell them. 

After reading some thoughts and memories I wrote about Bob, I told my friends that the best way for us to remember Bob was to continue to remember each other and stay in touch. 

Then we shared a toast to Bob. The glasses we raised to share our grief about losing Bob were also a symbol of gratitude for all the great times we shared together. 

I don't know if I was really creating a ritual by taking part in a memorial toast with some friends. All I know is that I was finally acting on my grief instead of just thinking about it.

About the producer

Kent Hoffman has worked on many different programs at CBC Radio including Tapestry, Spark, White Coat Black Art, Outfront and As It Happens. His radio philosophy is the same as the late Eddie Van Halen's music philosophy: If it sounds good — it is good.