THE central narrative of Mormonism is: family is most important. The “eternal family” is the whole point of… everything we said or did as Mormons.
Ironically, now 20+ years after leaving Mormon culture, I have never seen, nor heard of, a subculture of humanity that tears apart more family relationships than Mormonism does. Estrangement seems rampant.
Additionally: it is my experience that as cultural Mormons we didn’t have healthy behaviors modeled for us around grief and loss. Poor coping with loss was an emotional hallmark of my early life in within the orthodox LDS culture of Provo, Utah. The loss of the “Mormon dream” is something I only recently began to fully process and grieve.
Meanwhile: the current never-before-seen rates of “apostasy” within the LDS culture (particularly in my homeland, Utah) is a barrier to healthy relationships on a scale never seen before—leading to an epidemic of profound loss, which the culture is poorly equipped to cope with. The reality of coping with the loss of close—even intimate relationships, falls on the shoulders of the individual, and the family.
This is why, in my experience, grief circulates in the background radiation of every Mormon Story ever told.