I am surrounded with beauty, here at the beach. Birds trill, hydrangeas are beginning to bloom as peonies and rhododendrons surrender their brilliant petals, sand and sea are everywhere, and our small cottage allows a simplicity of living that is not possible at home.
It’s pretty wonderful, and I am grateful for the respite.
But it’s impossible to get away from the news. And as I have written here many times, I choose not to, as I believe it’s crucial that I/we bear witness to the travesties and injustices in this unsettled world, even if we can do nothing about them.
The horrific shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde has already been obscured by the January 6 hearings, the frightening drop in the stock market, the Russian capture of most of the Donbas and all the other bad news that crowds my inbox.
But it has not been eclipsed in my mind. Despite the peace and beauty of my vacation surroundings—maybe even because of them--I feel intensely the throbbing bite at my soul these monstrous mass killings produce.
Because I know what it is to lose a child.
As do the mothers of Stoneman Douglas, Sandy Hook, Columbine. Buffalo, Pulse, Ukraine, and yes, even Russia—they are mothers after all—how I imagine we are all thinking of you, Uvalde mothers--feeling with you, anguishing with you over the loss of our children.
Our lives have changed in ways we never could have imagined.
Some of us have long known these changes. Uvalde mothers, raw and stunned with sudden agony, you are just discovering how this assault on your existence will characterize your coming days, weeks and months. You will soon find out who your real friends are. Some will back away from you, and you will be surprised. Your naked emotion is too hard for them to handle, it touches off reactions in them they are too frightened to touch.
Some of them will say appalling things to you, like “Only the good die young,” “God needed another angel,” “Well, at least you have another child,” “Everything happens for a reason,” “There are no accidents,” “I know how you feel,” and my personal favorite of all these dreadful cliches, “God never gives us more than we can handle.”
Really?
Yet we go on, somehow, limping into a future empty of our child. Our lives, so ruthlessly sliced into “before” and “after,” become too hard for others to comprehend.
Grief gets into our bloodstream, a partner for life.
Some imagine that we will return to the selves we were before the loss of our child and relate to us in that way. Friends chatter about their children and grandchildren, showing us pictures on their phones, speaking of the graduations, proms, birthdays and weddings our dead child will never have. We attend some of these events, celebrating with friends and relatives with quiet anguish an ever-present undercurrent in our hearts.
Somehow, some day, dear mothers of Uvalde, you will learn to carry your grief in a way that doesn’t crush you daily. You will struggle to find the tool that will allow you to do that. It might be a garden, a scholarship fund in memory of your child, a crusade for gun rights, a community of fellow grievers, the comfort of religion or a renewed spiritual life, volunteering for a cause, starting again in a new home or area of the state or country.
It might be just the profound struggle to learn, day by day, how to be alive in your strange new world.
Your heart has been broken; your former life shattered. Respect that absolute new fact.
Tend your grief carefully as it is part of you now. Stay with it, get to know it, let yourself feel it fully. Try not to push it away, numb yourselves with alcohol or drugs, frantic activity, or all the other things so readily available in our crazy consumer culture.
You will someday laugh again, though a current of loss and memory will always course beneath that laugh.
And in time, you will summon the strength to fully love your other children, your spouses, not allow them to drown in your grief.
And know it’s possible to survive, even though you cannot now imagine how you will do that.
I have.
ODE TO DEATH
You gave me no time-outs, dear death. No
way to stop being everything but what I
was to all the edges. No noticing anything
but what was right there, in front, in back,
underneath, on top of me. Restricted to your
greedy snare, I couldn’t move, had no prayer
to pull me out, no god wanted him or he’s
another angel now, to soothe. Only the good
die young left me comfortless, time hasn’t
healed. I can still peel the scab away, feel
your raw wound. Such purity, to feel only
pain. I don’t blame you anymore, you
happen every day to everyone, why not
my son? Death, you’ve offered me a kind
of peace. I’m unable to return to the place
I was before you came. Separated from others
who don’t know you yet, I stand alone. You’re
too sad for me, people say. You give me solitude.
You give me singularity, a kind of dignity I’d
never have if not for you. Death, I’ve paid
your dowry, we’re married now.
(Unhinged, Blue Light Press, 2019, Sharon Charde)
Dearest mothers of Uvalde, I’ll be with you in spirit, a sister in sorrow, as you find your way.