If Grief is a Weapon, I'm Fully Armed

I've had a lifetime of grieving. For my beloved people, for my beloved country.

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

Within the past few months three people I’ve loved dearly have died. One of them, my nephew, Jason, died in October, suddenly and without warning. The others, my cousin Kathy and my nephew Chuck, fought their battles with cancer and lost. Kathy died just weeks ago, after only a few months of being told, and Chuck died two days ago, mere weeks after the discovery that cancer was wracking his body.

It happened much like my dear Ed, who languished with an undetected cancer until he died just nine days after a chest Xray revealed a deadly lung mass that had already metastasized. My Ed has been gone for three years now. I wake up every day wanting him back. My dreams with him take us back to days when we were younger, but nothing much happens. We spend my dreams doing what we’d always done. Living, laughing, talking, loving… They are my comfort. They remind me of the way it was. When I awaken, reality strikes. We can’t go back. My life will never be the same. I am without him and that’s forever. I must rely on our memories and wrap myself in our long-lasting love.

I’m old now and one of the disadvantages is that I’ve outlasted so many loved ones. I’m almost completely alone among my peers. It’s painful to be here constantly saying goodbye. I’ve seen far too much death in my lifetime not to understand how tenuous life is. Once long ago, on a gravestone in the Keweenaw I read: “Mourn for the Mourners”. That was decades ago, but by then I had already lost my grandparents, my parents, my in-laws, and too many others who had been so present in my life. Those words struck me like a sword. They’re imprinted.

Lately I feel as if mourning is all there is. It isn’t just the people I care about. That should be enough for anyone, but no. I’m watching my country die before me, and, again, because I love it so, I’m hoping for a miracle. Something that will stop the malignancy in its tracks and allow our lives to go on.

I’d settle for the meaningful mundane, the extraordinary ordinary, a comfortable sameness, a recognition that this life, as we’ve known it, is worth saving. At the same time, I recognize that something caused the malignancy, and it needs to be addressed. If we survive this, we can never let it happen again. We have to learn from whatever caused this. The next time might well be the last.

We’ve dealt with love and loss before—all of us. We know what it feels like to watch the people we’ve loved most just slip away, no matter how hard we’ve tried to keep them here where they belong—with us—in the place where they, too, want to be. Something was working to kill them. Too often it had gone undetected for too long. By then the malignancy will have won, no matter how valiant the effort to save them. But sometimes, for whatever reasons, the patient lives. The patient thrives. The patient has been given a second chance.

I am an example. I’m a seven-year survivor of Stage 3C breast cancer. My right breast and ten lymph nodes were cut away, I had the dread Chemo and 30 hits of radiation, and I’m here to tell the tale. I’m 87 years old. I’m relatively healthy and I still manage to live on my own. Nothing much has changed in the way I get around. I’m just a bit slower at it, that’s all. I’m grateful for my second chance and I plan to keep on making the most of it. I’d be a fool not to.

I’ve managed to hang around while so many—too many—of those I care about have died, but despite my losses, I’m ever the optimist. I care desperately about those who are still living, and I’ll do anything to help make their lives better. My family and friends are everything to me. And so is my country.

You may have noticed that I’m every bit as attached to America as I am to any living human being.

You might wonder why I’d spend what are no doubt my last days, months, or, if I’m lucky, years, fighting for what so many are now calling a lost cause. America as we know it is dying. Much of what caused this was deliberate or self-inflicted. Some of it, like most deadly malignancies. stayed hidden until it had spread too far to be cured by ordinary measures.

We’re in a place now where we’re in a battle for the life of our country, and those of us who care enough to fight will have to choose the way we face this battle. We’ll have to choose our weapons. We’re losing ground. At every vantage point the enemy is winning. The cancer of fascism, of authoritarianism, of inhumanity is all around us, invading every cavity of our lives.

Do we care enough? I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m still here and I still care. I’m sickened by what’s happening to my beloved country. This evil cancer isn’t nameless or faceless. It makes itself known every day in every way. It mocks the victims, it defies the caretakers, it challenges the systems that might provide a cure.

The maddening part is that there is a cure, if only the people who still have some authority would use it: it’s due process. It’s cemented into our Constitution and into our way of life. It’s there to be used.

We have a Bill of Rights in our Constitution, the first ten Amendments, which, simply, spell out Americans’ rights in relation to their government. It guarantees civil rights and liberties to the individual—like freedom of speech, press, and religion. It sets rules for due process of law and reserves all powers not delegated to the Federal Government to the people or the States. And it specifies that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”. ¹

The Fourteenth Amendment solidifies the Bill of Rights. Section One reads like this:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

There is no question that the Trump regime, currently and inexplicably in control of all three branches of our government, is working overtime to kill off every aspect of our democratic institutions in order to bring a new age of despotism, fascism, and oligarchy to the country they’ve each promised to honor and protect.

They’re a cancer among us, but there are those in our government who have the power to save us—even now. We know who they are, and we know what they must do. That gives us the edge. If we care enough for this country, we’ll advocate for it.

We’ll insist on due process. It’s the life-saving cure and it’s available.

The pressure is on. No more grieving; not until that last breath. We can’t lose this one. Not when we know we can save it. The tragedy would be in knowing we could have saved it, but we didn’t do enough.

Now we can. Now we must. Now we will.

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1. The Bill of Rights: What Does it Say? | National Archives