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*Warning: Some insinuations towards death and images that might be hard to take in. The second part of the essay is more uplifting if you’d like to skip to that* A man died outside of my apartment on Friday. I don’t know his name, I had never seen him before, I didn’t even know what was happening until the paramedics came. His car was halfway backed into the driveway to the garage across the street and he was laid perfectly flat-backed on a small piece of grass. His car door was open. He looked probably in his 50s or early 60s. It might have been a heart attack. The first thing I saw was my neighbors administering CPR until the medical team could get set up. I’ve never actually seen anyone in that state before, and it was hard to look away. I am not a praying person anymore, but I prayed anyways, or rather crossed myself and hoped it would get through to something. 45 minutes went by and they were still performing CPR. I didn’t know they could do it for that long. Every couple of minutes I would go back to the window and just pray. I really hate to be graphic, but just to see his limp body being pumped like that felt so very strange. Eventually, after almost an hour, one of the team members pulled the sheet out and covered him up, then they packed up their stuff, waited for a cop to come and left. On to the next body. It felt particularly strange for him to just be lying there, alone. These observations and feelings felt very new to me. I’ve never experienced such a thing. For a couple of hours no one was even near him. There is a small homeless encampment near my apartment and I noticed that one person came over and just knelt down by him and seemed to offer a type of prayer of his own. I was grateful for that. They must have left his body there for another hour or so after that for the cops to investigate, but it still felt so wrong. His body devoid of life, so therefore unworthy of attendance. Dusty tried comforting me by saying that he wasn’t in his body anymore and that was good. But my deepest impulse was that there should be some ritual - or some something. I appreciate the complex depth of celebration and grief in a funeral service, and he will probably receive something of the sort from those who knew him. I just felt so urgently that there needed to be something to mark that immediate, precise moment when the soul is released. Or at least that the sheet that covered him shouldn’t be this polyester nylon stiff black thing, but a cloth that was beautiful; a sort of tipping of the hat to the person who was. This year has been categorized by the vulnerability of human bodies. There is a virus which not only attacks the lungs and source of breath in our bodies, but is now being found to exhibit signs of neuro-muscular dysfunction in people who previously had none. The only reason why I am aware of the latter is because one of my best friends has experienced serious unprecedented neuro-muscular dysfunction this year, out of nowhere. She’s experienced muscle failure and the inability to ride her bike or even go for a long walk for periods of time. Wildfires on the west coast torching the land, decimating habitat and home, infecting millions of bodies with residual ash on skin and smoke in lungs, the very lungs our bodies need to help fight the virus. Present in this country for over 400 years, yet seemingly only now is there collective outrage, is the historic and current violent mistreatment of Black bodies. Many of us have used our own small bodies by flooding the streets in our towns to protest the lack of respect for these bodies. Soft eyes have been blinded with pepper spray, welts swelling on arms from rubber bullets. Sight taken away, basic body function rendered useless. Breonna Taylor’s body was in the vulnerable and sweet relief of sleep in her own bed, in sheets she probably took time debating over which color or fabric to make her feel most cozy, when her hold on her own body was so immediately taken away from her. Ahmaud Arbery’s body was in training for endurance, running and pumping his body full of fresh oxygen, feeling that particular sharpness in his nose when you push your body to its limits - when three other bodies took it upon themselves to prevent him from ever feeling that wind again. Elijah McClain’s fingers trained to be nimble to pluck sweet sounds from a violin, to serenade little furry bodies, to draw out music from thin air; a body tired with vulnerable blood cells from his anemia, that same blood stream which was injected with a foreign substance administered so carelessly and fatally by the other bodies surrounding him who wrongly viewed his sweet body as a threat. Women in the Uighur encampments in China, their bodies being forced to be sterilized against their will. Using their bodies for growing and nurturing another small body was no longer an option for them. And this eerily similar to speculations that our own government is doing the same to detained immigrant bodies. Callous governmental bodies controlling soft human bodies. Shortly after they took the man’s body away, Dusty came in to inform me that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed. My heart sank. I felt this impending weight. I hate that my first thought was the political consequence of her passing. Her own body went through so much already. Multiple bouts with cancer, housing the emotion and fervor needed to fight for justice and equality; emotions that are so very physical and build up in small crevices in the body. She took great responsibility over her own body, staying healthy and working out more than most people my own age do. Her death doesn’t deserve to be a political pawn. But the fact that one body’s passing provides such a deep blow to those hoping for a more equitable country, says more about our country than many would like to admit. So, this is a heavy loss nonetheless, and one my body was ill-prepared to handle after the shaking events of the day. I was in the middle of talking to my dear friend Rachel when the man passed away outside of my apartment. I went back and forth between being with her on facetime and just standing silently by the window. She is the mother of two of my favorite twin 4 year olds, Penny and Flo. They are kind and hilarious and whip-smart, and she and her husband AJ have everything to do with who they are as little humans. Rachel was telling me how her neighbors were going to be passing by on their way to their grandparents house to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. She taught the girls to say the traditional greeting “L’Shana Tovah” when they do, to wish them well. I just loved that image and idea of a family standing on their lawn, acknowledging and respecting their neighbor’s cultural traditions as they pass by. Just a small gesture, not imposing or assuming, but a tiny passing ritual towards another. It was that kind of moment that I was desiring for that man yesterday - that tipping of the hat. Just something that felt physical and small and human, but acknowledged our inter-connectedness as this strange species, who share the same types of bodies. I will be completely honest and say that on Friday I was closer to deep despair than ever before. I kept thinking of a quote by Mariame Kaba, a social activist from Chicago, “Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair”. But with there seeming to be so much at stake with the loss of RBG and a wide open Supreme Court seat, and everything else that is compounding, I felt truly overwhelmed and at a loss. I mean, we’ve been locked away for 7 months, working class people aren’t being supported at all, passionate protests for police accountability keep getting branded as Snowflake Parades and looting fests rather than cries against injustice, and for those of us on the West Coast, we haven’t even been able to take a proper walk outside for two weeks because of the rain of ash for a world that is burning around us. Oh - and it should be mentioned that at midnight on this same Friday, an earthquake shook Southern California, waking us all up from sleep, adding a pretty significant apocalyptic themed topper to the day. Our bodies are resilient but - are they that resilient? Later on that night, it was my stepbrother’s 18th birthday so we went over to my dad’s house. I almost didn’t go because I just couldn’t feel anything anymore. I stayed off social media for the day, but decided to scroll for a bit to see what folks were saying about RBG, and it was the first time in a long time I felt hope. Yes, the loss feels devastating, but the magnification of who she was as a person was amplified. I was chatting with my friend Kayla about this earlier, and we both agreed that to truly inhabit complete despair would do such an injustice to those who are truly putting their own bodies on the line day by day for what is good. There may be daily, weekly, monthly, yearly moments when we just don’t feel like we have it in us to keep going, keep fighting. And that’s okay. I think it’s incredibly important to let your body process through those emotions. Some days, months, years you may be able to tackle those phone banks and hit those streets; some days, months, years you may only have the capacity to buckle down and educate yourself and spend time with very close ones. “Pace” is a word my friend Lizzy pointed out when she gave me feedback on my first essay on disconnecting from the digital world. We are looking to realign with a proper pace for taking all of this information and circumstances in. And, as RBG so poignantly exhibited, caring for your own physical and emotional body helps you fight that fight for much longer than a season. Because Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed from this earth on the Holy Day of Rosh Hashanah, in Jewish tradition she is considered a tzaddick. This means that she is a person of great righteousness, someone who God deemed as worthy to live out till the longest part of the year. Though I am not Jewish, I am grateful for these human rituals and stories we have that are ancient and passed on to help us commemorate and honor these moments in our brief lives. This is what is so wonderful about a community of vibrant, dynamic bodies. Even when it may seem it, we are not alone. No man is an island. One human’s death is a loss for all of us. We must mourn and we must drop our coins and draw out our cloth, and then, we keep going. ———————————————- Please, for love of all that is good, remember to register to vote. ———————————————— Next issue will be on enjoying life’s tiny luxuries as a comfort in this chaotic world. If you have any personal tips and tricks - send them my way!
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