being cared for while saying goodbye
from eco-grief, to death and letting go
TW: This piece reflects on loss that is not chosen. Topics of Palestinian and Jewish suffering are included. Please take care and avoid if too triggering.
Nothing is fair, and you will be okay. Everything is perfect and you will still try to improve it.
The cycles of abuse, pollution, over-use and under-use are evident. We live with the loss of diversity everyday.
And yet, life persists.
Even in their neglected form, they find places to grow.
Even when the helicopters blair and the trucks pound, the bees still find their bliss nestled in the bosom of a rose.
Even when you cry from the noise, the suffering, the relentless loss, others come to your aid and rub their furry ears against your leg.
There is reprieve. There is restitution. There is the company of another to soothe your aching soul.
The damp, darkened shade spots offer you reprieve from the heat.
The warm, dry sunny spot offers you reprieve from your cold shopping experience.
The busy harvester squirrels offer you reprieve from a clean deck and give you sweeping movement for your sedentary back.
The heavy storms, in their viscous swirls offer you something as well. Take a step back. They have enabled you to fix your roof and get part of your home in order. This push is a gift in disguise. Of course, no one ought to tell you that but yourself!
This busy season, with the kids, is offering you a gift of reprieve as well. Time to focus on your home rather than the borrowed land project. Maybe it’s not a gift? But either way, there is no rush. It’s all waiting for you. Not going anywhere.
Breathe.
Remember, everything is okay.
Tomorrow, the NAKBA* exhibition at the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg, MB is opening. What will happen? Who will be tormented? Who will suffer? Who will be cared for?
I think of the traumatized ones who seek justice. I think of offering love and support to the violently triggered ones who long to avenge the loss in their bones.
The murdered cannot avenge themselves. The survivors grapple with the gaping hole in their life. Everywhere they turn, they are reminded of the hole. They take extra care not to fall in. But what if they let themself? What if —- when they fall —- they don’t die?
Some of us don’t have the privileges to keep us from falling. Privileges like relatives, who prop us up or wealth that buys us time. But in the end, something gives, and we do fall. It feels like death. It feels like there will be no way to survive. And when we get there, we are greeted with a bucket of tears, a soft pillow and time to grieve and grieve. For that is what death requires of us. Grief.
Our love, longing, and lack needs to be felt in its fullness and completeness. No rescuer, high paying joy or addiction will ever provide that completion.
Losing requires saying goodbye.
Say goodbye.
It’s okay.
You will survive.
From the Canadian Museum for Human Rights,
*The Nakba, meaning “catastrophe,” refers to the mass displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948 and the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages, all during the Israeli “War of Independence.” It is one of the defining human rights events of the twentieth century; the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians have shaped our modern understandings of refugees, statelessness, and the generational impact of forced displacement.