What The Grammys Taught Me About Grief

When the Grammys announced its decision to not postpone Sunday’s ceremony after the devastating wildfires that seized Los Angeles, my nose crinkled in disgust. Lives were lost. Entire communities leveled. Thousands remained displaced. Grief and toxic ash hung thick in the air. An opulent award show — for the famous wearing glittering gowns and tailored suits that cost more than what many suffering families had managed to crowdsource for their GoFundMe campaigns — felt gross.

I had zero plans to watch the telecast. But my 13-year-old daughter couldn’t wait for the show. All of her favorite artists — Doechii, Chappell Roan, Raye, Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter — were performing. Any time my teenager wants to hang out with me is welcome. When she asked me to join her on the couch, I happily obliged — plus, I love those artists too.

I missed the opening performance, but I was seated for Eilish and her brother, Finneas. They sang “Birds of a Feather” on a set designed to look like the foothills where they grew up in Northeast LA. Childhood photos of the two in the now-charred canyons where the Eaton Fire began flashed on a backdrop through the song. A hard lump formed in my throat. Only minutes in, and I was blinking back tears.

While I know music has healing properties, I never expected a four-hour televised broadcast to serve as an intensive therapy session for the sorrow I’d been carrying since the fires decimated the city I love and live in.

Though I didn’t lose my house, several friends who lived in Altadena and the Palisades did. The school where my daughter attended from first through sixth grades was razed to the ground. Located only a couple of miles away, Eaton Canyon was a beloved hiking destination for her class. I’d spent weeks looking at photos of our years at Pasadena Waldorf School, trying to reconcile how the campus that housed many of our most cherished memories no longer existed. My heart broke for my daughter’s wonderful teachers and peers.

Volunteering and donating eased the overwhelming helplessness that shaped my days since the fires. Still, I struggled with feeling that my sadness was selfish and unwarranted. I still had a warm home to rest my body; my daughter had a school to learn and thrive. What right did I have to hang my head alongside others who had lost absolutely everything?

By bringing together so many people to acknowledge and honor a community’s collective pain, the Grammys showed me everyone had a place at this outsized table of grief. And it raised millions of dollars in relief efforts doing so.

The award show paid homage to a city in mourning and also honored a city rising to the occasion, taking the next steps to heal itself and move through the pain. Videos of grieving Angelenos returning to the smoldering rubble where their lives once stood were intermixed with commercials highlighting local businesses destroyed in the fires. Most of those businesses I never knew existed, like Orla Flora Studio and Rhythms of the Village, but now I could directly support them. My heart bloomed seeing the resilience of the people who comprised and built this city. I was overwhelmed with pride for LA.

Hope shimmered on the faces of the children in the choirs of Pasadena Waldorf School and the Palisades Charter High School, who sang alongside Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock for “We Are the World.” These children had already suffered through the isolation of the pandemic and are now dealing with the trauma of their schools burning down.

Doechii, the “Swamp Princess,” won Best Rap Album, becoming the third woman to do so since the category’s inception, and there I was, squealing in happiness with my daughter. It was an emotion that hadn’t breached the surface in almost a month. Her speech empowering Black girls and women was powerful. To see her do it with her mother next to her onstage made it all the more inspiring. Don’t even get me started on her jaw-dropping, electrifying performance.

We were screaming at the TV as Chappell Roan appeared atop a giant pink pony. Her rousing anthem “Pink Pony Club” is a celebration of queer pride and a love letter to LA, a city that gave her the courage to be herself, she said.

Even in the smaller, quieter moments of the night, there were so many stirring displays of beauty and humanity. Shakira’s sons blowing kisses to her onstage from their table, Alicia Keys’ child nodding his head with pride as she accepted her achievement award.

At the end of the evening, members of the Los Angeles Fire Department who fought tirelessly to save LA, its people and their homes gathered on stage. They were met with thunderous applause. And then, the chef’s kiss to an incredible night — Beyoncé finally won her long overdue album of the Year for “Cowboy Carter.”

My disdain and judgment for airing the Grammys vanished as I cried, sang, laughed, danced and cried some more. After reeling with pain for my friends, community and city over the last month, I turned off the television uplifted and rejuvenated.

There is much hardship to get through and work to be done, but if we have joy and celebration and music at the forefront, we will make it through together. The Grammys were right. The show, and life, must go on.