Loss is complicated

I was driving my 13-year old son home from Chinese school when we got a text from my husband that Kobe Bryant had died.

Kobe Bryant was 41 years old. He was born in 1978, about a month and a week before I was born.

I am 41 years old and was with my 13-year old child yesterday morning, as was he, as were two other families.  Three young teenagers and 4 parents.

We are still alive.  They are not.

This was hard for me yesterday.

It is hard for me today.

Then the social media storm that I couldn’t pull myself away from because collective grief is something that both comforts me and confronts me happened.

Then the debates about whether people should mourn, how they should mourn, who they should mourn.

I’m not here for those debates, to be honest.

I’m here as a 41-year old parent of a 13-year old child.

I’m here as someone who has, in my own life, suffered from the sudden loss of the person closest to her in the whole world.

I’m here as an empathetic member of a community who sees collective pain and grief of people around me and isn’t about judging who has a right to pain, who has a right to protection from pain, who people can grieve, why they grieve or what they are grieving. I’m here as someone who is committed to holding space for all that is for those around me, whether I personally experience those same emotions or not.

It is hard to hold space.  It is hard to hold all of this and still have to organize my life, prepare for my classes, engage with the world.

So I’m writing this because maybe today is hard for you too.

Or maybe today isn’t.

If it is hard for you, I see you and I’m with you in your suffering.  This is the meaning of compassion.

If it isn’t, I see you too, and I’m so glad that you’re not affected negatively by all of this. I’d ask you to hold space, if not for the person or people who have passed, for those that are suffering in this moment, all of those who are suffering for a variety of reasons in relation to loss.

Someday, you may be suffering or in grief and someone (perhaps very well-meaning) may tell you that you’re doing it wrong, may not give you the space that you need, may try to help you through a process you didn’t ask for help through. And that will be hard, almost as hard as the situation you’re dealing with. It has happened to me and I hope it doesn’t happen to you.

Death touches us all in different ways, and in the moments that you need this compassion (whether now or later), I hope that people will hold space for you too.

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