I was awestruck, scrolling through photos of the eclipse on my Facebook feed, when I discovered I had to be at a funeral in a few hours.

A friend’s mother had just died. In the Islamic tradition, the deceased are buried as quickly as possible. She had passed away that afternoon and would be laid to rest before sunset. I went from the thrill of this wondrous celestial event to the sad awareness of parents getting older -- the phases of the moon, the cycle of the sun bringing to mind the shortening time we have left with our loved ones.

Nowadays, social media is how we find out about deaths among those in our wider social circles. Tragedy strikes in between first-day-of-school pictures and vacation sunsets. We get startling reminders of human fragility, of how quickly things can change. One minute we are clicking on the laughing face reaction at some silly meme, and the next click is a teardrop face on someone’s heartache.

Most of our modern communication happens via short written messages, even the most personal and tragic. A few days earlier, we had gotten word by text of another death: One of my husband’s high school friends lost his 17-year-old son after an accidental shooting.

Many of us remember when this kind of news was more commonly delivered through a phone call or a knock on the door. There are a few calls burned in my memory: the deaths of my grandparents and a best friend from high school.

In this case, the text gave us a minute to absorb the blow. When we went to that young man’s visitation a few days later, his parents had that shell-shocked look that I’ve only seen when parents have to bury a child. We offered our respects the only way we could -- by showing up, by bearing witness to their pain and praying for their healing.

I was still thinking about those grieving parents when I went to pray with yet another family, still completely raw in their own grief.

Even though the ways we hear about death are new, the ways we deal with it are very old. Mourning is our way to make peace with death. Rituals offer a chance at closure, a way to find meaning and comfort in the most difficult and painful moments.

In the space of five days, I observed Christian and Muslim funeral traditions. A few of the differences in custom were related to timing and social etiquette. The most jarring difference, however, had nothing to do with religious belief: One service marked the natural order of life when adult children lose a parent. The other was an unnatural and heartbreaking disruption of that cycle.

It made me consider: What happens when rituals bring no closure? When, instead, there is the devastation of unanswered questions? Why did a teenager get fatally shot by a friend after they found a gun in a park? Why are there so many tragic stories of senseless loss?

What happens when, instead of peace, there is searing pain that hits even more brutally when everyone leaves?

In social media, everything is instant. We look for instant gratification when we share. We react, we respond, we get validation from keystrokes. It’s an efficient and controlled way to communicate.

Mourning is messy. Grief takes its time.

It seemed that in a second, the moon blotted the sun. It blocked a brightness so intense that all we saw was a ring of fire. And then, slowly and surely, the light returned.

Reminding us that darkness doesn’t last forever.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about a conversation I had with a reader shortly after the election in November.

I had written a column about how half the country was trying to explain the election results to our children, especially those who heard the winning candidate slur their ethnic or religious group. My children, like millions of other people in this country, struggled to understand how a man who had denigrated so many people and groups had gotten elected to the highest office in the land.

I wrote that it was “OK to tell them there are still millions of sexist and racist people ... We have to be able to acknowledge and recognize the depth of our country’s racism and sexism.”

Those weren’t the only factors involved in how people voted, of course, but they played a role. I expected pushback from readers who disagreed, and some of them sent hate mail, insults and threats. But one gentleman called to have a more personal conversation. He said that he had been reading my column for years, and even though we sometimes disagreed politically, he imagined we would get along well in real life. In fact, we would probably be friends. (That’s probably true.)

That’s why he said he felt personally hurt by the column I had written, in which I seemed to say that people who voted for Trump were racist or sexist. That was not my implication, I said. As an American Muslim, I am particularly sensitive to being unfairly maligned by stereotypes and assumptions. Like you, I’m insulted by the insinuation that I have anything in common with hate-filled terrorists or extremists.

He said he didn’t care for Trump’s rhetoric, nor did he think Trump really meant all of what he said, but that he wanted to vote for someone who was not a typical politician and could bring economic progress.

I understood that. In my desire to tend to his hurt feelings and also to get back to my work, I chose not to say something I now wish I had. I wish I’d said that I could never have voted for a person who made the sorts of remarks we heard from Trump -- even if I thought “he didn’t really mean it.” There were many people in the past election who were not racist, but who were willing to overlook ugly and hateful rhetoric because it didn’t affect them personally or because they didn’t take it seriously.

You know who didn’t overlook that rhetoric? Straight-up hate groups. They heard it loud and clear and took it as a call to arms, which many of us who he demonized feared would happen. We saw it on horrific display when hundreds of torch-bearing neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend, and a counter-protester was killed crossing the street by a man plowing his car through the crowd.

In Trump’s latest remarks about the racist rally and violence in Virginia, the president went back to his original statement -- blaming “many sides,” and stating that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the Confederate-statue protests. The fact is, only one side has been marching with Nazi paraphernalia.

In response to Trump’s comments, former KKK leader David Duke tweeted, “Thank you to President Trump for your honesty and courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville ...” He said the rally there was to “fulfill the promise of Donald Trump.”

I’ve been thinking about what I would say to that same caller today:

I’m sorry, sir, that your feelings were hurt by my stating the fact that this recent election has energized, emboldened and empowered bigots and racists.

But I am far sorrier about the murders of Heather Heyer in Virginia, of Ricky John Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche in Portland, of Richard Collins III in Maryland and Srinivas Kuchibhotla in Kansas -- killed by those spewing hatred.

I have read the surging reports of mosques being vandalized at the rate of two per week, the reports of swastikas in schools and racist taunts used by bullies. The fact that our president cannot distinguish between racist violence and those protesting Nazis should make us sick.

But I take heart in how our conversation ended. You told me that you were going to wait and see how the newly elected president acted in office. So, how has he done? He has cut funding for groups that fight white supremacists, killing the Countering Violent Extremism funds for those groups that work to stop violent extremism and recruitment efforts for far-right groups. You heard him in his own words in the aftermath of this horrible tragedy.

You and I live in the Show-Me State.

Have you seen enough yet?

The pleasant chit-chat my husband always made with our children’s teachers at conference drove me nuts.

We had anywhere from seven to 10 minutes to find out how well our children were learning, what they were expected to know in each subject and what we needed to do to help them master these skills. We couldn’t spare time on a funny anecdote about homework. That’s at least 45 seconds wasted.

“Just let me do the talking,” I would say outside the classroom, as we waited for the bell to ring, signaling our turn with the teacher. He would agree, and then inevitably ask some random question that would derail the conversation.

I mean, he is a very good conversationalist.

But parent-teacher conferences are one of the few shots parents have to ask face-to-face questions of the most important person in your child’s school experience. It’s not the time for chit-chat. The annual state test reports that many districts send over the summer can be vague and hard to decipher, so those conference minutes are precious.

It turns out that many of us aren’t asking the right questions during that time. Bibb Hubbard, founder and president of Learning Heroes, a nonprofit based in Alexandria, Virginia, works to inform and equip parents so they can help their children succeed in school.

A national poll of parents with children aged kindergarten to eighth grade commissioned by the organization found a startling discrepancy between how well parents think their child is doing in school versus how children are actually performing.

Nine out of 10 parents surveyed believe their child is performing at or above grade level in math and reading. In fact, 66 percent of parents say their child is doing “above average” academically. Statistically, that’s impossible. National data of test scores show that barely a third of fourth- and eighth-graders are performing at grade level.

“Parents do not have an accurate picture of their child’s progress,” Hubbard said. The reasons are complicated. The vast majority of parents (86 percent) said they relied on report cards to gauge how well their child is learning. But a report card may not show how well a child is mastering the skills deemed necessary by state requirements.

A parent attending a conference might understandably ask, “How is my child doing in school?” That’s a typical question. They may hear a response of how well the child behaves or gets along with classmates, but not get information on specific areas in which the child needs extra help.

Hubbard says the way schools communicate with parents is mostly through indecipherable jargon, which most parents don’t understand. For example, standardized test reports often use the word “proficient” to describe a student’s progress. But that word can mean five different things to five different people, she said.

A key question for parents to ask their child’s teacher is: “Is my child performing at grade level in math and reading?” Parents should try to bring copies of last year’s state assessment to find out what the results really mean for their child’s learning in the year ahead.

This can lead to a tough conversation. Some parents may not want to hear their child isn’t progressing as well as they ought to be, and teachers may be reluctant to bridge the gap between perception and reality. But teachers have to be able to say, “Your child is not mastering concepts as quickly as we would like, and we are going to take these measures to help.”

Hubbard said their research found that, compared to last year’s poll, this year’s parents reported greater anxiety about raising their children. But they weren’t as concerned about their kids’ academic progress -- most assume their child is doing fine in that department. Rather, they were most worried about bullying, peer pressure, their child’s social and emotional health and even paying for college.

The rise in anxiety for Hispanic families was especially pronounced from the previous year. The survey did not ask why, although next year’s poll may explore that question in more detail, Hubbard said.

“We’re in a very different environment -- culturally, politically, socially -- than we were last year,” she said.

For the past couple of years, I’ve attended the parent-teacher conferences by myself, taken copious notes and debriefed my husband on the highlights at home.

It’s an efficient system, but Hubbard pointed out that it’s always possible to ask for a follow-up meeting or conversation if you run out of time at the conference. It can be helpful for a teacher to hear a little about how your child learns best and what they love to do.

That sounds like useful small talk.