Tending to Endings (twenty-three)
Much of this week for me has been about listening and weeping and witnessing and reading and very little cohesive writing. But I do want to share a few personal reflections that seem relevant during this collective loss, and also, a few resources in case you find them helpful.
Boise held a vigil on Tuesday evening to mourn the killing of George Floyd and a long list of other Black lives taken by state sponsored violence. Five thousand attended at the steps of the Capitol. I watched over livestream and wished I was there in person. The Black leaders who organized the vigil helped us channel anger and despair into story and silence and song. And then we said the names, thirty minutes of names, each one followed by fifteen seconds of silence. Some were familiar to me: Tamir Rice, Eric Gardner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Emmett Till, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd. Far too many were not.
I’ve thought a lot recently about how difficult it is to speak the name of those who have died even when the death is not untimely or brutal or tragic. Bringing up the name of a loved one who is gone sometimes brings uncomfortable things into the conversation–sadness, the need to console, new questions, the reminder that we are mortal.
When the death is one that is marred by tragedy or wrongdoing or violence, when I am uncertain of my own responsibility, when innocent people get hurt, it is even harder.
At times in my own life, I have felt the pull to avoid reckoning and grief. When my kids were young, for instance, and I was going through a divorce, it was tempting to avoid stories about their past that included their father. Divorce with young children was excruciating and I felt a great deal of guilt and anger and uncertainty and sadness. I didn’t want more hurt to arise for them or me. It was tempting to try to start from where we were in our new parallel co-parenting lives.
But one afternoon while my sons and I snuggled on the couch for story time, one of them asked me to tell the story of when they were born. I hesitated, thinking, no way can I tell that one. And then I took a deep breath and dove in to the story they had heard many times before. The telling was healing for me and important for my sons. It was their origin story and evidence that they come from great love.
That moment of hesitation gave me awareness, and it was the beginning of me learning to not step around any of our stories. It took practice and a willingness to be very uncomfortable and, for me, lots of therapy. I needed to talk through all the painful stories with wise adults so that I could be present for my sons as they worked through their own hard journey. That work brought me to a point where I could talk about their daddy as they did, with ease and enthusiasm and kindness.
This has come to mind lately, not because it compares in scope or scale (it doesn’t), but because guides me as I grapple with the question of my own role in the painful story of racism our country. That moment of hesitation still informs me.
For instance, saying Black lives matter shouldn’t be any more complicated for me than saying the lives of the elderly matter. Both of those statements are true and needed and both have implications for policy and politics. I believe both deeply. But only one feels like it takes a bit of bravery for me to say. I suspect this is because I have not fully integrated our collective past with our current story.
I believe much of my own anti-racism work begins with making space for that larger story. In my experience, stories are essential for healing, not because they provide closure, but because they offer a path to connection and belonging. It’s human to want to skip over the hard part, but I don’t think we get anywhere good without it.
More Resources
These are just some of my favorites that speak to the healing power of story, particularly stories that have been excluded or left behind
In this ten minute episode of Poetry Unbound, Ali Cobby Eckermann’s A Poem for Keeping Memory Alive. Pádraig Ó Tuama introduces the poem:
Ali Cobby Eckermann’s poem calls readers to pay attention to the fact that remembering is a moral act; it is a courageous act, and to remember the ways in which our people may have participated in massacre mobs and to remember that mourning is an ongoing muscle that we need to recognize and that we need to practice;
Isabel Wilkerson is a masterful storyteller and historian and The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years on the topic of American history.
Our US Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo writes often of indigenous stories that have been silenced in her newest book, An American Sunrise. The poem, “Washing My Mother’s Body,” is a particularly visceral account of reconnecting with story through memory and ritual:
I never got to wash my mother’s body when she died./ I return to take care of her in memory./ That’s how I make peace when things are left undone./ I go back and open the door./ I step in to make my ritual. To do what should have been done,…
I used to incorporate Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk: The Danger of a Single Story into my writing classes, and it has been coming to mind a lot lately:
Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, “secondly.” Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story.
The Facebook Page of the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence includes links to the video of the Boise vigil held on Tuesday. I have also been participating in their Collective Thriving Story Circles that they are facilitating this year which may be of particular interest to those living in the Treasure Valley area.
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Thank you and Love.