Grieving for Mandela: The Mess of Loss

 

I will carry with me the memory of when I first found out that Nelson Mandela died. I was in the lobby of a hotel in midtown when my best friend put her hand on my shoulder, pointing to the TV. I didn’t register at first what they were saying, but she repeated: “Nelson Mandela just died.”

There is something about death that makes my teeth ache. It brings me back to other losses. I started Googling the name of my drama teacher from high school who passed away last winter to find her acting profile, and although it was a year ago, I again felt that absence pressing down in my stomach like a stone. I wrote about my naiveté during that time, how I believed “you couldn’t possibly lose someone whom you loved enough.”

I am sure that it is a similar feeling with Mandela for many people. While I can only relate to him as a public figure, someone we talked about in history classes and when I was first getting into radical activism, I am still reminded of the profundity of loss. It can be all-encompassing and make your joints ache like you are old before your time. We are pleased to note that he lived a full life and died at an old age, but the loss still weighs heavy on us.

A member of my community recently died at a rather young age, and though I personally didn’t know them well, their death tipped a whole community into action. It made personal the issues that they was battling with and brought us all out of a collective sleep about things we often think abstractly about. Lack of care, lack of knowledge, slipping through the cracks… Contrary to Mandela’s passing, it felt like their life went unfinished. And many were left raw with their emotions, blowing up at one another because of it.

So, as I am consuming more and more media about Mandela’s life – in the glowing idolized way that we talk about it or in the down-to-earth representations of his life, about the fake sign language interpreter and presidential selfies at the funeral – I am also seeing visions of other grieving periods and other deaths. There is anger there, mixed in with sadness. For those who live on, grieving lets us become liberated with our own emotions.

I don’t want to idolize Mandela’s legacy any further than it already has been. I want to acknowledge that his life was messy, just as messy as the aftermath. I want to hold on to the idea that we are all works in progress, and that death is yet another moment of transition. But I want to go back to my somewhat naïve notion that you cannot lose someone who you have loved enough. I still believe this, though now I think of it as a different kind of process. Sometimes it can be clean. We shave off the excesses, the complications of their life and make them a symbol to play a part in our continued struggle. And sometimes it can be messy. We generate more and more ways to deal with our anger, with our sadness. We do not sit with those emotions unless we are using them to act. And it takes immense effort to cut through all of that to get back to what our main goal was: to love that person enough so that their memory is not lost.

I hope that as we use the stories of our losses in the future as ways to motivate our actions that we may also reflect on these people not only as symbols, but as the same messy individuals that hold us accountable every time we invoke their memory.

Taking Stock, Talking Shop (with Myself)

Today is a day of questions. I think that regeneration requires that you ask a bunch of questions - of yourself, of others, of the universe. I've written about the loss of my uncle and my favorite high school teacher in the past month, and it has gotten me to turn inward. First as part of a grieving process, and then as a process of rebirth and regeneration. So, today, I want to share some questions that I've been thinking about and that I think are instructive for everyday life. Importantly, major life events don't necessarily need to prompt reflective thought, so take these down even if all you're doing today is watching daytime television and potentially going to work!

How do I look at the world - as a narrative or a sequence of events?

What inspires me?

What situations make me feel the most secure/happy/solid? What situations feel comfortable, but not necessarily amazing? What situations absolutely suck?

Who or what adds value and meaning to my life? (the secret to this one is to break it down by looking at situations in which you feel the most content/satisfied and working backwards from there)

What do I actively want to pursue? What do I want to let fall away? How do I go about it?

Once you've started ruminating a little bit, check out some lessons on how to get there and make it happen!

Remembering Jessica Goldstein

"We are not idealized wild things. We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.” ― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

This quote was with me all day yesterday, after I learned that my acting teacher in high school, Jessica Goldstein had passed away from brain cancer early that morning. She had been a great friend and mentor to me - one of those teachers that you talk about in your memoirs as someone who touched your life and made you really believe in yourself. One of those mythical people who, while they were all-too-human, still came through for you in every possible way and encouraged you to be the best person you could be.

Many of my high school memories are peppered with memories of Goldstein. I remember her in her amazing laugh. I remember her telling us stories about Nepal and Russia and New York - places we suburban kids could only dream were much better than the city we'd grown up in. She was accomplished in so many ways, and yet she never condescended to us. She treated us like mini-adults and gave us much more sway than many of our other teachers. She fought for us, especially when we wanted to do something radical.

She allowed me to put on one of my most glowing accomplishments: a stage-adapted version of Speak, a novel by Laurie Halse Anderson about rape and its affect on a high school girl's psyche. She pushed me to be courageous, to press hard, and to speak with my loudest and clearest voice.

I will miss her dearly.

 Lovely Goldstein, smiling amidst all our crazy high school antics.

The Pale Thin Light: Looking Forward after a Loss

As I shared last week, there was a recent death in my family. As a result, I've been struggling to process the event while still keeping myself on a regular schedule, spending time with people as they return to campus, and getting ready for the new classes that started today. In some ways, the regularity and the busy school atmosphere are helping me to take my mind off of the loss, but it's definitely going to take some time to come to terms with. The thought regularly crosses my mind that this is not the worst of it - the hardest part will be returning to Bangladesh and knowing that that person will no longer be there.

But, while I find it very important to keep that in mind, I believe that its not the sole thought that should take over my spirit throughout these tough times. As a result, I have been thinking of ways that I hope to buoy myself up and work forward from this loss, and I hope to share them with you. Loss can appear in many forms other than death - small and large, there are many life events that can feel as if they will shatter our spirits and hold us hostage. All we can do in those times is to turn inward and keep our attention on the light that comes from within us, even when it feels as if that light has only a weak glow to offer.