Thinking About Sad.
Today I got sad news. Not directly-me sad news: sad news for others. In one case, the sudden death of a film columnist I’ve read and appreciated; in the other case, a marriage of two people I like, ending. (I’ve met one of the people in that marriage in person a few times; I’ve yet to meet the other, but I’ve followed them online for years.)
Because I try (try) to be empathetic, I feel sad. These are all good people. My Twitter feed has lit up with folks reminiscing about the writer who passed; many are offering condolences. Spam bots are still responding with porn links, because it’s Twitter now that Elon Musk owns it, but that’s a side issue.
There is a coincidence here: I was thinking today about deaths, and loss, and sad news. Not for any particular reason, but because it’s worth thinking about why we feel loss. Why we grieve. I thought of deaths of those I never met, like author Douglas Adams (2001); I thought of people no longer with us due to suicide, like my nephew Robert Walsh (2021) and my friend Tracy Evans (2019), or sudden health collapse like Dana Thompson (2019); I thought of my best friend Mike Pearl, gone because a drunk driver crashed into his car (1997).
With Mike, I’d thought I’d processed his death enough; but I realized I hadn’t when I got out of a May 1998 screening of The Truman Show, quickly reached my car, and started bawling. No, I hadn’t. So I flew to the East Coast a few months later, saw people who knew him, and thought about him. I’d needed to. It didn’t end the grief; grief doesn’t end. You just, you hope, figure out how to handle it all. It’s like a burned, or partly-cut tree which survived the burn or the cut: the tree grows around the damage, but the signs of damage stay.
It’s been said before: grief means you care. And “What is grief but love persevering?” (from the Marvel show WandaVision.) And “Grief is love made homeless.” (The Chestnut Man by Søren Svelstrup.)
Different kinds of grief are happening now, to people I’ve mostly never met, but I know enough how they are feeling. I wish them strength, and love. Because this is never easy.
Because I try (try) to be empathetic, I feel sad. These are all good people. My Twitter feed has lit up with folks reminiscing about the writer who passed; many are offering condolences. Spam bots are still responding with porn links, because it’s Twitter now that Elon Musk owns it, but that’s a side issue.
There is a coincidence here: I was thinking today about deaths, and loss, and sad news. Not for any particular reason, but because it’s worth thinking about why we feel loss. Why we grieve. I thought of deaths of those I never met, like author Douglas Adams (2001); I thought of people no longer with us due to suicide, like my nephew Robert Walsh (2021) and my friend Tracy Evans (2019), or sudden health collapse like Dana Thompson (2019); I thought of my best friend Mike Pearl, gone because a drunk driver crashed into his car (1997).
With Mike, I’d thought I’d processed his death enough; but I realized I hadn’t when I got out of a May 1998 screening of The Truman Show, quickly reached my car, and started bawling. No, I hadn’t. So I flew to the East Coast a few months later, saw people who knew him, and thought about him. I’d needed to. It didn’t end the grief; grief doesn’t end. You just, you hope, figure out how to handle it all. It’s like a burned, or partly-cut tree which survived the burn or the cut: the tree grows around the damage, but the signs of damage stay.
It’s been said before: grief means you care. And “What is grief but love persevering?” (from the Marvel show WandaVision.) And “Grief is love made homeless.” (The Chestnut Man by Søren Svelstrup.)
Different kinds of grief are happening now, to people I’ve mostly never met, but I know enough how they are feeling. I wish them strength, and love. Because this is never easy.