Good Grief
The year 2020 was not kind. In addition to global and national loss, my brother Matt passed away from a heart attack at 38 years old. It was a shock to our family and we are heartbroken. Unexpected and out-of-order deaths have their own challenges and we’ve struggled through the process with support from extended family and friends. To be frank, American culture is not adept at dealing with death (aren’t we currently downplaying the mounting death toll from COVID-19?). The pandemic has caused loss, police brutality causes loss, in terrible, preventable addition to the small and large losses we all endure over our lifetimes. Rather than looking away from pain and suffering, we must practice facing it directly with sympathy and grace — it is the only way to move toward healing. I put this project together as a way to comfort those who have lost someone, and educate those who want to help them. If you are here for those reasons, I’m so sorry for your loss and I welcome you with loving arms.
These are, of course, ways that my family and I were personally comforted and moved — use what you know about the bereaved to help in your own special way. I urge you to, at least, show up in their DMs with “thinking of yous", listen to their pain, and ask if something specific is okay to do for them (come over and wash dishes, send a meal, have virtual coffee). Be specific so they can say yes or no, rather than a vague, “Let me know if I can do anything.” Above all, know that grief is an unpredictable process rather than a linear progression. It’s the toughest experience I’ve gone through and denying it’s happening only makes it worse. Be kind and care for one another.
Send this to anyone you like, no attribution necessary. If this guide has helped you and you want to pay it forward, please donate to Modest Needs, my brother Matt’s favorite charitable organization.
Books that helped
It's Ok That You're Not Ok: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand
Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief
Life's Journeys According to Mister Rogers: Things to Remember Along the Way
Words That Helped
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze,
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch her until she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says: “There! She’s gone!”
Gone where? Gone from my sight – that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side,
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of her destination.
Her diminished size is in me, and not in her.
And just at the moment
when someone at my side says: “There! She’s gone!”
other eyes are watching for her coming;
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:
“There she comes!”
When the Day turns into Night by Mister Rogers
When the day turns into night
And you’re way beyond my sight,
I’ll think of you, I’ll think of you.
When the night turns into day
And you still are far away,
I’ll think of you, I’ll think of you.
Even when I am not here
We still can be so very near
I want you to know my dear
I’ll think of you.
Chidi’s Wave Returns to the Ocean | The Good Place
Picture a wave in the ocean: you can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through it. It’s there, you can see it, you know what it is. It’s a wave. And then it crashes on the shore and then it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while. That’s one conception of death for a Buddhist. The wave returns to the ocean, where it came from, and where it’s supposed to be.
On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic by Jesmyn Ward
Witness Black people, Indigenous people, so many poor brown people, lying on beds in frigid hospitals, gasping our last breaths with COVID-riddled lungs, rendered flat by undiagnosed underlying conditions, triggered by years of food deserts, stress, and poverty, lives spent snatching sweets so we could eat one delicious morsel, savor some sugar on the tongue, oh Lord, because the flavor of our lives is so often bitter.
They witness our fight too, the quick jerk of our feet, see our hearts lurch to beat again in our art and music and work and joy. How revelatory that others witness our battles and stand up. They go out in the middle of a pandemic, and they march.
I sob, and the rivers of people run in the streets.