On grief, and the passing from it

"Grief is the Price We Pay for Love", by CGP Grey, CC BY SA 2.0

My friend Emily Hauser (@EmilyLHauser) wrote this amazing piece for DAME Magazine. In this one paragraph, she encapsulates the grief through which we're going:

We are marked, we are scarred, we are scared, and we are so very, very sad. Each of us – even those intent on performing a kind of cruel invincibility – is dancing with death, locked in its embrace and responding to its omnipresence, even if only by denying it has any presence at all. We are a generation, several generations, who will live the rest of our days under this shadow, this American grief running alongside the blood in our veins.

I've been thinking about grief for a few weeks. 

Yes. We are rent. We are disjointed. We are in mourning.

We're in mourning for a life gone. We are in mourning for the travesty which our country has become. We're in mourning for COVID, and for kids in cages, and for Black people being gunned down by those assigned to protect them. We are in mourning for the death of empathy, the death of sympathy, the death of decency. We're in mourning because the world in which we thought we lived has been shown to be nothing but a sham. All the sureties we held onto have been shown to be nothing but mirages. We are in mourning for the realization of the fact that a large part of our fellow-citizens would happily see us dead in the streets.

These are not happy times. These are not times in which to take delight. We are at a place in our politics we haven't seen since 1860. One can say that the fifty years since the Civil Rights movement, and the dislocations and irruptions which the movement for equality for all our communities in this Commonwealth engendered by that, mirror the five decades leading up to the Civil War. A country divided against itself, between two camps which could see no way to compromise without capitulation.

But this isn't 1860. This isn't 1968.

In 1861-1865, even those fighting against slavery were not paragons of racial justice. Seeing Black slaves as fully human was as rare in the North as in the South.

But look at what's happened in this century-long summer and autumn. Millions flooding the streets calling for racial justice. Young people realizing that if they want to change the world, memes won't cut it. Corporations siding rhetorically with the calls for root and branch reform.

Then there's the Plague. A so-called president turned a health emergency into another of his culture wars. If you took steps to protect yourself and others, you were an enemy. This so-called president's followers echoed his words and actions, to the point that this so-called president's base has been infected at far higher rates than his enemies have. But we've also seen bravery, heroism. We've seen retired medical professionals donning the gowns again to help with the fight. We've seen librarians being pressed into service, using their skills at research to track the disease. We've seen people from all walks of life banding together to help strangers. The Plague has brought out some of the worst of us. But much more, it has brought out the best in us.

We are in grief. But grief is a way-station, not a destination. Human beings can't live in grief all their lives, not if they're normal. Perpetual grief is as deleterious to a human life as is perpetual happiness. Grief and joy are opposite sides of the same coin. But grief doesn't last. Grief transcends itself to become resolve, to become another milestone in your life.

We must grieve, but we must turn grief into action. We must grieve, but we must honor that for which we grieve by making sure it doesn't happen again. We must grieve, but grief is what teaches us to deal with life in all its highs and lows.

Grieving for a life which will not return is human. And using that grief to forge a better life is the best way to honor that which has passed. We must grieve. Then we must act.