It’s a rainy Saturday morning and all sports activities for my kids have been canceled. Although not planned this way, the sudden change of pace feels fitting in light of world events—atrocities—unfolding around us. Of course, awful things (and good things) are always happening, but this week has felt particularly terrible. I’m thankful for the chance to catch my breath, to grieve in my own way, to digest the gruesome developments. In this position I understand I am quite privileged.
I’m reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead right now. The protagonist, an eleven-ish-year-old boy Damon, loses his mother to a drug overdose. Traveling by limo from the funeral to the burial–without any family or friends in the car, Damon notices the driver has another passenger up front, and they’re being quite affectionate with each other. Reflecting on this, Damon says, “He’s putting moves on this chick, thinking of pussy while driving me to see my mom get put in the ground. It hit me kind of hard, how there’s no kind of sad in this world that will stop it turning. People will keep on wanting what they want, and you’re on your own.”
That line–“there’s no kind of sad in this world that will stop it turning”–felt like Kingsolver had plucked the sentiment from my chest. It’s the way I felt when my husband was deployed and after my brother and father died. It’s the way I think many feel about the unfathomable happening around us. How can people carry on like normal when something catastrophic–either personal or societal–occurs? And yet–even if donating and praying and advocating and pausing to reflect–for the most part we do continue on in our normal lives. Blame human nature or necessity or both. Still, something about this truth seems cruel or crass, certainly unfair. I struggle with it.
A haunting poem by Hailey Ayson is making its way around social media, and it captures this dissonance so well.
It seems almost greedy to be able to hold my kids close, to not fear so much. There is an ache where my brain tries to reconcile my despair for the families torn apart and my own relative safety. Perhaps I’m subconsciously grasping for Ayson’s secret of the universe to make it all make sense.