Scars and Healing

Many will pause today to share memories of 9/11. As I scan social media that theme is already apparent. We all have memories of where we were, what we did, how we felt. It was a day like no other which has scarred our nation.

How will we remember the hundreds of thousands who have died in the COVID-19 pandemic? Will there be a day for them? Will there be monuments, scholarships for the children of frontline workers who have perished fighting the deadly disease?

Right now every day feels like a national day of mourning, and yet, not. Our attention is called away from one disaster to the next. Encouraging people to observe proper public health behaviors to prevent the spread of illness is seen as an aggressively political act by those who equate being unmasked to a celebration of their individual freedom.

But people keep dying. When will we mourn?

It is very important to be able to grieve loss. That is why we go through these annual recollections and moments of silence and reflection on this day. We need to. Grief ignored or suppressed is poison to the human spirit. We need to sit with our feelings of horror and sadness about this day in order to heal.

The loss of human life to the coronavirus far exceeds those lost on 9/11. And it goes on. Death and long-term damage is far from over. That does not make the observances of this day unimportant. But it does point to how crucial it is for us to acknowledge and grieve this horrific event in the history of our nation.

We are losing friends, and family, and neighbors, and co-workers. We are losing trust in our government and in those around us. These are wounds that run deep.

When will we mourn?

How will we heal?

Comments

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents. When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word. Days passed. They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts. Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public. So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that. But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...

Separate and Unequal

Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not. It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...

Village Green/Town²

Search This Blog