Why am I grieving so deeply for someone I didn’t even know? CrossFit Games athlete Fee Saghafi posted this on her IG page, with Amanda Barnhart commenting her own resonance with the question. They are athletes in the Sport of CrossFit, while I am a clear amateur, if with the same question in my body today. Why am I grieving so deeply for someone I didn’t even know?
When I first learned of Lazar Djukic’s death, I remember being stunned. Disbelief. Shock. Sadness. Fear. I was driving home from campus, trying to find the livestream of the Games so I could catch up on all I had missed while at work. I couldn’t find the livestream anywhere. It felt odd. Foreboding. So I went to Instagram to at least see finalists. I learned of Lazar’s death on Instagram. My body’s visceral reaction was hugely out of proportion for learning of an unknown-to-me-except-by-name Serbian athlete’s death by drowning. My skin went clammy. My gut wrenched. I felt nauseous. I cried all the way home.
Then I struggled to function that afternoon, listless, teary. Finally, I dove into a rather mindless task of creating an index for my beloved’s forthcoming book while watching the Sound of Music. I downloaded DoorDash to my phone (for the first time), ordering Indian butter chicken take-out, with naan my body didn’t need but craved. The last time my CrossFitting body had Indian food was probably four years ago, before I learned all I’ve learned. I made myself a stiff cocktail. All behaviors completely out of the usual for me. I stayed up insanely late. Got up earlier than I should have. I finished the Index. Then I struggled with whether to watch the Games or not. I couldn’t turn it on. Then I couldn’t turn it off. Grief refused. Grief relentless.
What I know so far: all this signals a viscerally-felt loss of trust and a sense of equanimity, even innocence, in the sport of CrossFit. I have loved the sense that anyone and everyone competes in the Open, leading to those most fit going to the Games. I’ve imagined the sense of community I know in the gym transferring to the Sport itself. It actually doesn’t and it’s past time more of us said so. My body is grieving the loss of what I thought CrossFit was in the face of its corporate realities, which I don't judge nor expect to be different. Huge loss all the same, for a body that is in the gym she loves for at least an hour a day, 5-6 times a week. I had felt a part of something global and now it has become safe only locally, with people I trust.
CrossFit Sport is an influencers' business within a corporate-structured competition, which was clearly on display in this Games. I was at the Games last year in Madison, overwhelmed there by how little the sense of community I’ve treasured didn’t seem to exist at the inter/national level. At least for most of us. I remember being offended by the Mayhem t-shirt–Mayhem vs. Everyone. All in good humor, I know, but symbolic to me of increasing division by brand and by camp. Which again, will not change. I left before that Games was over because I had achieved what I came for–seeing Annie Thorisdottir compete as an individual–and the Games was so anti-box-community-feel I couldn’t stand it. My body knew then that the Games is no longer a community-event, at least as I need community to be.
Social media and our close-knit media teams give us all the sense of a box-community, but just as grief is love with nowhere to go, Instagram and corporate sponsors are platforms where a grounded-love in community--love that is self-giving, without reciprocity--will rarely if ever grow. Readily apparent in the face of a senseless tragedy with absolutely no communal structure that could hold all that needed holding. Can't expect a Navy Seal to be adept in collective grief, after all. Few of us are. CrossFit Sport–as it is today–is not a community that makes human beings more human, growing them into communities of practice grounded in relationship, love, trust. I suspect it used to be and clearly thinks it still is. I grieve Lazar’s death and yet it is requiring CrossFit to examine who it has become today, as a corporate-driven competitive sport. I think so many of us are grieving because we have lost the innocence of who we thought we were together, seeing now who we actually are, have become, in this unavoidable, market-driven structure. No one is to blame, and it's not going to change anytime soon, if ever.
Naturally, then, it was my body that reacted viscerally to the senseless death of such a clearly good-hearted, deep-souled guy at the hands of an adolescent sport governed by corporate norms and Navy Seal/military guys with no skill nor leadership in collective grief. My body revolts against the lack of care for nourishing details for the whole human body. I yearn for a fierce feminine that loves competition yet is strong enough to stand in power to soften the hardnesses we socialize into men. Like Annie Thorisdottir. Like Kara Saunders. The sport of CrossFit is a business, not a community. Businesses don't know how to stop, to grieve collectively. Which meant everyone had to grieve alone, as best each one could, as an individual. Excruciating.
Though I am across the country, even the world, my body is grieving so deeply because I can see Lazar’s grin on guys I know at my box. I know guys who run like him, whose gait reminds me of Lazar’s gait. And several of the folks at my gym have lost colleagues in the armed forces, in Afghanistan and Iraq, in actual war-zones. All that death and impermanence came front and center this week, in my body, in my box. Fear. Sadness. Senselessness of death, so young. Wounds happen in community so need to be healed in community. But the sport of CrossFit is not a community, it's a business. It needs to grow up past the adolescence of its current structures into a different kind of organization prepared if/when the need to grieve arises. Because it will again. Life happens and people take risks because they choose to. But the Sport needs to grow up and realize it's NOT a community. (Perhaps a future post on Parker Palmer's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Community (with a fourteenth thrown in for free)" is coming...).
My body is wise to recognize excruciating loss and respond appropriately. Which is apparently first, really carb-heavy Indian take-out, a stiff drink, and overwork…before moving into my own discipline of writing so to understand, to encourage, to invite. I will move back into clean-eating tomorrow, with my rhythms of metcons and barbell work to steady me.
None of this alters the daily and weekly practice toward health I engage in my own box, because I’ve never been that interested for myself in CrossFit as a sport. CrossFit is my community of practice. It’s the discipline that brings me great joy in my body and stillness to my mind. It’s the camaraderie that pushes me to grow in courage, confidence, and skill. I spend 5-7 hours per week in my body, in community, doing the methodology and health-learning I love to do. Before CrossFit, I was rarely in my body for so many hours per week, and I had shame & fears in isolation, often with repetitive-injuries from overrunning. CrossFit grew me up out of all of that to trust my community of practice to encourage me, to celebrate with me, even to grieve with me when I fail at something. So to practice and grow stronger as I may decide.
Anger is grief unresolved. It is necessary upon transgression. Rage is collective anger, unresolved. It can devour any human collective if not held in community containers willing and able to hold it well. Time will tell whether the Sport can grow up beyond its corporate branded norms, so to create a collective container for grief when something like this happens again. Because it will. Eventually. But I expect Rage will course through social media like a forest-fire in dry timber. I grieve that inevitability as well.
My prayer is for Luka and his mother, Lazar's partner, Anja, that the CrossFit rages that are coming do not devour them alive. May they grieve so to be found by a peace that does not depend upon the conditions of peace. May they find purpose again, when it is time, but not a moment before.
RIP, Lazar Djukic, tragic soul-teacher now for those willing to feel their own pain, sadness, without lashing out, without blame. When you let the grief have you, for as long and as often as it wants to have you, there will grow an unbidden and unexpected, even undeserved freedom…and Lazar’s life-energies will flow once again in that vibration of love, in your own body.
