my grief practice

notes on honoring humanity and feeling the weight of it all

Funeral March,nd by Jacques-Richard Chery

[content warning: death, grief, oppression, and extreme violence]

First, I recognize that I am allowed to feel and grieve. There is nothing to be ashamed of. This is a sacred and ancient practice. I will not pretend that things are okay or that I am not impacted. When I need to cry, I will and it will be raw. I will sit in the dark or let the sun kiss my skin. There will be water or tea for rehydration. There is music, I am listening to it now. Other days there is silence and contemplation. Whether alone or with others, I lean into the discomfort. Sometimes there is anger or despair. I think it necessary to be in those places to reflect the gravity of what is happening, what has happened. Some things ought to anger you, some things ought to devastate you. I show love for what, who, mattered by practicing loss. And there is loss. I hold the truth that death is political. I hold the truth that grief is political. I reject the notion that I must be stoic or that feeling will impact my contributions to liberation movements. Some things break you, knock the air out of your lungs. I have mourned millions. Sometimes there is a picture or a name, other times numbers, and lists. I make a practice of rounding up. I pause to take in bad news. I close my eyes and remember to not become desensitized. I read about death, dying, and grief. I think about all the terrible people who lived pampered long lives, with monuments in their names. I think about how the oppressed deserve good deaths too, about death liberation/justice. How people are still being murdered in Gaza, homes bombed into graveyards. I ask forgiveness from the dead but never expect it. If I was less forgetful, there would be candles lit. I unlearn all the things I was told to care about through the lenses of colonialism and capitalism. I make sense of dehumanizing news titles that minimize the murders of my kin. I see how they humanize the destroyers of life and freedom. I travel through space and time by exploring history and cultures. The numbers of who I grieve grow as I learn and study. I love on my people while they’re alive. I grieve as often as I need to. Sometimes it feels like all I do. I witness and worry. I do not expect or force the regulation of my nervous system, still, I use my coping methods. I write lists and download books. I go to the protests, teach-ins, webinars, death cafés, and grieving spaces. I sign onto letters. I watch the news and keep up on social media. When people ask how I’m doing, I am honest. Somedays all I know is that I am human and that we deserve better. I think about all the assassinated revolutionaries, remains of kin trapped and displayed in universities and museums, about desecrated resting places, about the pieces of people we can’t put to rest, about murdered infants without birth certificates, about the things worse than death. I feel it all and I give it time. I think about how it ought to not cost a thing to live or die. I plan the demise of the funeral industrial complex and think of a world where folks don’t need to crowd-fund to bury our dead. I feel and I feel and I feel, the weight of it all. Some say not to, but I see this too as solidarity work. Moments of life given to honor that value of who and what was. Whether it’s 5 minutes or an afternoon, I make space for this practice. Some are afraid that if they give in to the feelings, that they will stay there forever, in the depths of the beast. Many have lost their ancestral ways of navigating these things, some of these things are not process-able and will never make sense. There is no meditation for genocide or self-care practices to work through watching and learning about massacres through your phone. I think about the Black folks who retrieved, with care, what was left of people after lynchings. How Mamie Till chose to leave the casket open, let the world see what they did to her boy. I move my body and scream into pillows. I write about it, like now. I pray for the fall of empires and try to remember to eat when my appetite fails me. I don’t have all the answers, but I have this practice. I am still afraid of my death and the death of those I love because this world is not how it should be and the doctors are statistically less likely to believe my illness or pain. I learn the meaning of words and scroll to the death and legacy portions of wikipedia pages. I will take off from work when possible for death-anniversaries. I will be more unapologetic in my grieving. I will not ask for permission to be human. I will become friends with long pauses and awkward interactions. I will say no to how things are as many times as needed. I will nurture hope whilst I tend to my grief. There is nothing to be ashamed of. One time, in a difficult situation I told someone that I was breaking and they replied, “breaking open”. I didn’t appreciate that statement at the time but now I think of it often.

-K