In these past few days of helplessness and despair I have once again clung to metaphors of light penetrating the dark and love spreading faster and farther than hate. I, like many others, cling to such metaphors to provide comfort in a world seemingly gone mad, mad on every hemisphere, on every continent, in many countries, in many cities, across cultures far and wide, both near and far.
As a once English teacher now forty something suburban dwelling library media specialist at a public high school, I don't know the first thing about how to once and for all defeat evil, terrorists, fundamentalism, nor ISIS in particular. I am not an expert on historical alliances, current treaties, global economics, EU refugee policies, European constitutional laws, Islam, radical Islam, racism, sexism, or civil rights. Nor do I expect are you. But what I do know and believe deeply is that Edmund Burke had it right when he declared "the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good [people] to do nothing."
Our primary task starts with honoring the dead. It starts with the smallest acknowledgment, the simplest expressions of solidarity, the tiniest of olive branches extended to our nearest and dearest, and continues as we extend those gestures into larger actions, actions of hope. That hope dies when we criticize one another's impassioned responses to our own finite mortality and the search for a life fully lived, instead nitpicking at the approach or the attempt, instead of focusing and rallying around the intention.
So to those who have changed their Facebook profile picture to a French flag, I am sure if you had known more about Beirut's terrorist attack the day before, you now are thinking of them as well. The wave of red, white and blue I see awash on my news feed is a tangible way to express both outrage and support.
For now.
I recognize that for those who have visited France and Paris in particular, like me, the massacre speaks more directly to us but we are also not discounting other lives lost to terror in other lands, in other cultures. You and I stand with Beirut and every other location touched by the deaths of innocents.
Similarly, while the campus of UCONN is 45 miles up the road from me and I am no longer a student, I can condemn those who anonymously scrawled "Mahmoud killed Paris" on a dorm room welcome sign. I stand with those demanding UCONN students know and do better.
And even though I was never a student at Yale, nor the University of Missouri, I can empathize and feel the pain of those in your communities who feel discounted, threatened, and unsafe. I can stand with you to demand better. I can model how to be better.
Moreover, though I do not know what it feels like to be of color, I know that those who have championed #BlackLivesMatter are not simultaneously excluding any other lives. Of course, all lives matter, too. I can also stand with you.
In one week I will stand for Transgender Remembrance Day. This does not mean I also do not stand for any other lives lost or ruined in the fight for LGBTQ rights.
Honor the dead. Express your solidarity. Show compassion. Then take action. It is the only hope we have to preserve full lives of joy.
About Me
- KSchmidt Writes
- Writer, Library Media Specialist, flautist, member of the Twitterverse
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Public Grieving
Growing up in my house meant yielding to a few taboos: no discussion of bodily functions, no prioritizing individual needs over the collective, and finally, no wallowing in sadness. Tears were to be held back, sadness to be pushed aside, and routine to be reestablished as soon as possible. I learned this so well that when I was teaching second grade and my grandfather passed away the day before Halloween, I went into work the next morning dressed as Red Riding Hood and carried on as normal with all the festivities including eating cupcakes and parading around the school grounds during which I had to smile and wave a la Princess Diana to all the parents watching.
Grieving, it would seem, was something to be put on hold, to be dealt with later, certainly not in public, and only within the privacy of one's own room. This may not be an uncommon lesson internalized from my generation's parents, many of whom bore up as deprived children during the Great Depression and World War II, those whose later young marriages and parenthoods were forged by the stoic blue blood protocol-following appropriate grieving of JFK's assassination by Jackie O.
When my friend had to cancel family plans this past Sunday to retrieve my cat Buddha's body from under my deck, he called to let his mother know that after a week of disappearance, we had in fact found Buddha dead, and would need to preserve his body for the night until we could get to a proper vet. As he hung up the phone she said, "Have fun." (Which, in a moment of great sorrow, actually made the two of us laugh out loud--a lot.) This was not unlike my own mother's response to my own phone call the next day. After a few seconds in which she allowed herself to cry, she pulled it together, rallied, and said, "So enough. You should go back to work." I had been grieving my 17 year old cat just 24 hours. He was still in my shed in a cooler.
While Buddha died in peace, he had been dead in the elements for a few days. I discovered him because of a swarm of flies hovering on my deck and because of an unmistakeable smell of death. How does one publicly grieve, especially when you have been taught to do so privately, especially when you live alone, especially when your pet has been through every major milestone in your adult life from age 30 onward with you, especially when the final details are unpleasant?
Buddha came into my life after I had lost my first cat, Tuna, tragically at six months old to a rare disease. Devastated, I swore I would never get another pet. One month later, a phone call from my brother changed everything. A cat had shown up or been dropped outside a full shelter, they had no room, he was living in a house with multiple dogs, cats, 80 chicks and ducklings just hatched (not joking), and was not doing well. He was maybe a year old. After travelling to MA and seeing him hiding in the back of a closet, I took him home to NY. One ferry and car ride later, he became my constant companion and confidant. We moved to CT shortly thereafter, from an apartment to a house six months after that.
I loved Buddha. I loved Buddha more deeply and for longer than I have loved most people. The longest we have ever been apart, until now, was for two weeks when I went to Australia in 2005. As when my father died, I have trouble imagining a world, a life without him. I see him everywhere because this was our house, our life together. I see him waiting on the front steps for me to arrive home from school. I see him standing at the sliding glass door meowing to come in. I see him looking adoringly at me, perched on my chest. I see him in the garden, curled under the elephant hosta, sleeping. He is every bit a part of me as my right arm, which he once bit when I was practicing my flute.
What I know is simply this. It will be some time, an undefined time, an elusive time, before I can fully enjoy my bed, my house, my gardens, my life once again. It will be some time before I don't feel so fragile as to expect to burst into tears when another person looks me in the eye or heaven help me, tries to hug me. It will be some time before I can even articulate what is enough, when is enough, how much is enough. But the time will come. I will continue to honor Buddha s best I can. I will try to honor myself by at long last, finally, and in a new way, publicly grieving.
Grieving, it would seem, was something to be put on hold, to be dealt with later, certainly not in public, and only within the privacy of one's own room. This may not be an uncommon lesson internalized from my generation's parents, many of whom bore up as deprived children during the Great Depression and World War II, those whose later young marriages and parenthoods were forged by the stoic blue blood protocol-following appropriate grieving of JFK's assassination by Jackie O.
When my friend had to cancel family plans this past Sunday to retrieve my cat Buddha's body from under my deck, he called to let his mother know that after a week of disappearance, we had in fact found Buddha dead, and would need to preserve his body for the night until we could get to a proper vet. As he hung up the phone she said, "Have fun." (Which, in a moment of great sorrow, actually made the two of us laugh out loud--a lot.) This was not unlike my own mother's response to my own phone call the next day. After a few seconds in which she allowed herself to cry, she pulled it together, rallied, and said, "So enough. You should go back to work." I had been grieving my 17 year old cat just 24 hours. He was still in my shed in a cooler.
While Buddha died in peace, he had been dead in the elements for a few days. I discovered him because of a swarm of flies hovering on my deck and because of an unmistakeable smell of death. How does one publicly grieve, especially when you have been taught to do so privately, especially when you live alone, especially when your pet has been through every major milestone in your adult life from age 30 onward with you, especially when the final details are unpleasant?
Buddha came into my life after I had lost my first cat, Tuna, tragically at six months old to a rare disease. Devastated, I swore I would never get another pet. One month later, a phone call from my brother changed everything. A cat had shown up or been dropped outside a full shelter, they had no room, he was living in a house with multiple dogs, cats, 80 chicks and ducklings just hatched (not joking), and was not doing well. He was maybe a year old. After travelling to MA and seeing him hiding in the back of a closet, I took him home to NY. One ferry and car ride later, he became my constant companion and confidant. We moved to CT shortly thereafter, from an apartment to a house six months after that.
I loved Buddha. I loved Buddha more deeply and for longer than I have loved most people. The longest we have ever been apart, until now, was for two weeks when I went to Australia in 2005. As when my father died, I have trouble imagining a world, a life without him. I see him everywhere because this was our house, our life together. I see him waiting on the front steps for me to arrive home from school. I see him standing at the sliding glass door meowing to come in. I see him looking adoringly at me, perched on my chest. I see him in the garden, curled under the elephant hosta, sleeping. He is every bit a part of me as my right arm, which he once bit when I was practicing my flute.
What I know is simply this. It will be some time, an undefined time, an elusive time, before I can fully enjoy my bed, my house, my gardens, my life once again. It will be some time before I don't feel so fragile as to expect to burst into tears when another person looks me in the eye or heaven help me, tries to hug me. It will be some time before I can even articulate what is enough, when is enough, how much is enough. But the time will come. I will continue to honor Buddha s best I can. I will try to honor myself by at long last, finally, and in a new way, publicly grieving.
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