Grieving together—and apart

I was in line at the Save-on-Foods when I got a text from my friend Alexis: BBC News Alert, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died.

Somehow I managed to pay for my groceries while also texting about ten different friends, oh no oh no terrible news. I could feel my heart racing with despair but I tried to smile at the cashier, to say, “How are you doing today?” I wanted, I guess, to connect with another human, to make eye contact, to be in the grocery store. But she couldn’t hear me through my mask. When I got outside, I sat on a concrete pillar with my groceries slumped at my feet and I cried. 

This news arrived at the end of a week spent living in the city with the some of the worst air quality in the world. We are used to gray days in Vancouver, but it’s strange to have gray without rain, to see the sun through the wildfire smoke like a bright, white disk tacked onto the sky. My friend’s four-year-old thought this white sun was the moon, which feels right for these surreal times.

For days we kept our doors and windows closed tight as I sweated my way through Zoom classes, trying to ignore my own damp face shining back at me from the corner of my screen. The ceiling fan did little more than stir the stale air. On dog walks, I could feel the burn at the back of my throat. I could taste particulates in my mouth. (Just saying that word—particulates—evokes that chalky tongue feeling.)

I liked being dramatic about the smoke, telling Mark that it was the physical manifestation of my own hopelessness. I was and also wasn’t joking. But still, we were doing okay. Our home was not under threat from fire. We had no health conditions that were exacerbated by the air quality. We were handling the smoke and the pandemic and the moth infestation. (Did I mention the moth infestation?? They are western hemlock looper moths and Roscoe snaps at their gray papery wings as they flutter around the courtyard of our building as if potato chips have floated in from the forests. The internet tells me that this, at least, is precedented: the moths overtake southern British Columbia in ten-to-thirty year cycles. I know, it’s all very Biblical.) 

Sitting outside the grocery store, all that okay-ness just evaporated. I felt so alone. I watched people rush inside, hooking their masks around their ears. I wanted to grab someone by the hand and say, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died.” I wanted someone to grieve with me. Instead I considered all the people who must be celebrating her death, who are hopeful for the political possibilities it represents. I hated having that thought at all. That such bitterness could arrive, unbidden, in the midst of grief. Now, as I type this, I wonder if I would behave so differently if a conservative justice had died. 

Just before the grocery store, I had stopped by the post office to drop my Canadian passport application in the mail. But I felt so American as I cried for Ginsburg. I regretted, as I occasionally do, how leaving the country of my birth has left me in this strange in-between space. Likely no one in the Save-on-Foods parking lot would lose their healthcare or their reproductive freedom as a direct result of Ginsburg’s death. As long as I stayed in Canada, I wouldn’t lose those things either. It is weird to bear witness to the erosion of America’s democratic norms and institutions from afar. This second passport feels like both a gift and a betrayal.

When I got home, Mark pulled me into a hug. He’d known about her death before I’d texted him. “I wanted to wait until you got home to break the news,” he said. I was worried he wouldn’t get it—but I shouldn’t have been.

I sat in front of my computer for an hour, scrolling through Twitter, watching my own grief reflected back at me, echoing, amplifying itself. I watched a video of all the people gathered outside the Supreme Court, lighting candles, leaving flowers, singing Amazing Grace. I longed to be there. I longed for any kind of ritual to make space for this grief. (In my imagination, a group of women and non-binary folks are gathered in a church or a temple, singing, holding hands, lighting candles, giving long hugs. Of course it would be officiated by Stevie Nicks. This fantasy is only further fueled by the fact that every single part of it—the touching, the singing, the indoor gathering, the hugs, Stevie Nicks coming to Canada—is forbidden by the pandemic. Even the candles are forbidden by the poor air quality.) My life, which already had too few rituals, now has almost none. 

We walked the dog to the liquor store and I sent Mark in for beer and bourbon. And when we got home, we toasted to Justice Ginsburg, who worked under incredible pressure until the very end. After dinner we watched the documentary Boys State, which I cannot recommend enough if you, like me, need something to restore a sliver of your faith in America.

I like writing these newsletters because putting coherent thoughts on the page requires summoning some wiser, calmer version of myself. She’s probably always there, but lately writing is the only way to reach her.

The letter continues to feel like a kind of radical experiment in connection in these days when isolation is compounded by so many forces large and small: virus, smoke, closed windows, closed borders. After my last letter, I got messages from friends and internet acquaintances and strangers about grief, about teaching, about fertility treatments, about loss. One was from my friend Bonnie, who runs a spiritual center in California, about her own struggles with giving imperfect gifts. We exchanged a few emails on how easy it is to let the desire to give the perfect gift get in the way of the act of giving itself. This applies to my own life in so many ways. The desire to give the perfect gift, write the perfect newsletter, vote for the perfect candidate. These desires eclipse the profound privileges beneath them: giving, writing, voting.

On my way home from the grocery store yesterday, I stopped by the UPS depot to pick up a mysterious package. It turned out to be a picture book made by Bonnie: a perfectly imperfect gift. The book is called Animals and the Songs they Sing. On each page is a photo of an animal accompanied by the lyrics to various Broadway musicals. (Picture a vizsla drinking out of a toilet with the words “I’d like to drink from a clear blue stream / Where the water is icy cold” from The Fantasticks.) It’s ridiculous and wonderful. I stopped crying long enough to read it to Mark and Roscoe. It was the littlest bit of light in a very dark day. 

Today, I can see the mountains and the sky. Sliding the patio door open and taking a deep breath feels like a celebration. It feels miraculous. 

Here is another imperfect gift, shared by my friend Megan. A poem by Wendy Xu, “If You Find that Living Is a Little Bit Sad”:

If You Find That Living Is a Little Bit Sad

Someone’s face framed by computer screen

is not the same as someone

in a room. Make choices, then watch

stuff happen. Say yes I agree to take up the dark

pail of my life before this one and empty

Its guts into the river. The river thanks me

and shines harder. Overhead these indomitable

stars. This row of stern white houses

where I thought my friend lived, where 

even now young people still gather

around a fire. The fire feels like being removed

from my own face. My own face turns toward 

The shimmering water where it burns but

does not burn away.

Here is a link to Wendy’s book, which I have not read, but which is going on my library request list as soon as I send this message. And here is an essay I loved by Lauren Markham, on sending letters.

What are your pandemic grief rituals? I’d love to know all about them. 

Yours,

Mandy