Iâm going to go back and edit this (maybe) because it is halfway organized, but I wanted to share for the sake of sharing. Iâm trying not to get into the habit of things dying in my notes app.
2/23/22
There is a poem called âAccident Report in the Tall, Tall Weedsâ by Ada LimĂłn. Itâs a lengthy poem, but there is a part that where she talks about having a friend that is obsessed with plan crashes. He memories the details of the wreckage, tells her about different ones that have happened across the country, about the aftermath - how people move on and some donât. And she says it wasnât until some time later that she learned her friendâs brother had been a pilot. We can assume he died in a plane crash and his obsession was directly addresses/attacking/understanding the thing that took his brother away from him.
The last line of that section is âI canât help it, I love the way men love.â
I think about people who lose loved ones to cancer or rare diseases, and then grow up to become doctors who treat those conditions exclusively or find cures for them. People who dedicate their lives to fighting gang violence or drug addiction because theyâve watched someone suffer. There is bravery in confronting the thing that hurt you. The thing that took your loved one away. The thing that may take you away. There is bravery in confronting the monster. I, myself, am not as noble as an oncologist or community leader. But I fight still the same.
I spent my childhood being my grannyâs tag-a-long to funerals where she would have to sing and serve in the kitchen. I never sat in the sanctuary, but I was around. And never realized how much sadness I was surrounded by. Until she died. And I sat in that church that I had grown up in and accompanied her to, with her body cold and dead beneath the pulpit where the communion table would usually sit. You were allowed to touch it, and I didnât allow myself to touch her.
I sat in that same fellowship hall where I used to hide myself from grieving families and granddaughters who put too much hot sauce on their chicken and picked over lemon glazed pound cake. They probably didnât care for sweet tea either.
Soon after I became obsessed, too. I found an obsession, too. With funerals. And caskets. Flower arrangements. And grief. I bookmarked every website, bought every book, and downloaded articles I still havenât read.
Death and grief worked itself into my own personal framework. The lens through which I view media, people, and the world around me. Grief and loss rules everything around us and about us.
How much of our life is motivated by sadness and pain and grief? Some artists speak of how every story is a love story or about finding the love story in every story. I donât want to speak in a way that makes love sound mutually exclusive from these things because itâs not. It coincides with them.