Unspent Grief

It shouldn’t be this hard. 

I mean it should be this hard but it shouldn’t be this hard for me. In the work, it isn’t about me. It can’t be about me or my work doesn’t get done. I know this. I’ve seen this. 

“The doctors has to see her next,” the tears were cascading over her lids and her voice was catching in her throat. The “her” in question was silent, being dragged by the arm to the front of the line. Meanwhile, the volunteer gripping her arm lightly repeated herself, tears coating her voice, “Her house took 22 feet of water.” 

Us seasoned volunteers of the mobile clinic, those of us who lived – not in Plaquemines parish but in post-Katrina New Orleans- were a little frustrated. Bussed in from some far away church, the well-meaning volunteers were usually only around for a few days…two weeks at most. By the time we’d train one group they’d be off to other places, or home, their mission work done. But until they left we had to contend with their emotional responses to everything, to everyone.

The little camper-cum-clinic at the center of the volunteer action settled weekly on a shabby stretch of asphalt that once held parked cars for the destroyed and deserted strip mall in the background. Its meager awning didn’t stretch far enough to shade more than a handful of people waiting in line. It was common for 20 plus people to stand quietly, any documents they had managed to scrounge up rustled in their hands. The sun beat down so fiercely that one day we had to throw out all of the condoms we’d set out on a table- they’d been heated to a questionable temperature and felt liquid in their pouches. 

With the volunteer’s emotional outburst Luigi, my supervisor, and I exchanged a look and then Luigi explained the situation without ever addressing the volunteer.

 “John, your house took 23 feet of water right?” He asked it nonchalantly and John shook his head slightly in affirmation. To further prove his point he surveyed the crowd, “whose house took more than 20 feet?” Almost every hand in line went up. The reality was that no one would be standing in the middle of a parking lot in the blazing sun a year after a devastating storm if their situation wasn’t dire. 

Yes, the woman who had been dragged to the front of the line was struggling. Everyone in that line was struggling. But the volunteer was experiencing the situation in a deeply personal way and that was clouding everything. She was visiting the calamity that befell the Gulf Coast and she found herself mired in the sadness of it all. Bogged down by what had become the reality (stark but still real) for anyone living in the area. The resident volunteers had adjusted to it – or in trauma language, had become numb. The numbness allowed us to do our work.

But today I wasn’t numb (enough). Today, at the funeral of a murdered young man who I worked with on a research project, I was that well-meaning volunteer with tears in my eyes. 

I wanted to pay my respects. Scrunched into the balcony, so close to the ceiling my hair almost grazed it, I listened intently. The air was still and the feel and heat of the church was somehow reminiscent of going to church with my grandparents in Texas.

I was ok walking into the service. ok until I saw the program, until I heard the first person cry out. All of a sudden I could feel the tears well up in my eyes and scratch at my throat. I clamped down, unwilling to cry. This wasn’t about me, it was about…

It was about bearing witness. It was about giving testament that he mattered.

But my grief felt misplaced. It felt obtrusive for me to be crying after such a brief encounter. What place do my tears have in the shadow of his mother’s, his brother, his daughter’s mother?

Sorrow and grief are not zero sum; iIn theory I realize that my grief has no bearing on anyone else’s. Still, I would not cry, not really.  Tears fell. I couldn’t help that but by the end of the service, as I – like the hundreds of other people crammed into the sanctuary to pay their respects- filed past his coffin, my head throbbed with unspent grief. 

Where do I put it? How do I spend it?

 In work that is deeply emotional I think it is necessary to be…removed. Not indifferent but able to bookmark your own feelings to deal with them later. It isn’t about being heartless it is about not drowning in other people’s sorrow- not getting lost in your own; not because they don’t deserve empathy, but because it is so much harder to do the work that needs doing when you are trying to make your way through tear-blurred vision. 

My colleagues, for the most part, looked and sounded more like Luigi at today’s funeral, but today I was no Luigi and I’m not sure how to be Luigi in this violence work…I’m not sure I want to…I’m not sure I can.