This weekend we had the memorial service for my wife’s grandmother, who died a few weeks ago. She was a wonderful woman, very much la doña for this Hispanic side of the family, very much more of a mother than a grandmother to my wife, and she was the last of her generation. The get-together of family and friends was a celebration of her life, and it was the kind of party I think we would all want – certainly the kind of party I’d like for myself when the time comes – with tears, sure, but more laughter and shared stories of love than anything else.
For my wife, the loss she experiences most keenly is the loss of her grandmother-the-person and the special bond they had. I feel that, too, but obviously more as a reflection and without the unique closeness. That slightly distanced perspective, however, let me experience a different sort of loss, the loss of her grandmother-the-idea and the unifying force she emanated across all of those family and friends. Because what hit me hard as we were saying our goodbyes was that I won’t see most of these people ever again. It’s not that I don’t want to see them again – they’re nice, loving people and I very much enjoy my time with them – but there’s no reason for me to see (or even think about!) most of these people ever again.
I’m sure I’ll see some of my wife’s close family members again, because there are direct connections of friendship and shared experience that exist alongside the reason for connection that my wife’s grandmother provided. But it’s harder now. While my wife’s grandmother was alive, it took zero effort for my wife to think about her cousin, say, or her uncle, and vice versa. The connections of family and the thinking about family and the news of family and the occasional get-togethers of family were part and parcel of the meaning of her grandmother, and so long as her grandmother was alive, so were those connections of meaning.
It’s not that those connections of meaning just vanish with the death of a matriarch or patriarch, but now everyone has to make an intentional effort to keep those connections alive, and that is NOT easy. We get busy. Life gets in the way. Old grievances resurface and strengthen, often under the stress of divvying up (literally disconnecting) money and property. It’s nobody’s fault and everyone is doing the best they can, but the loss of a family-unifying parent or grandparent isn’t just the loss of a physical person, it’s also the loss of a family-unifying idea in its natural and organic and effortless form.
It’s not just families where we experience the loss of a unifying idea and a shared meaning of community. If you’ve ever worked for a company that failed, you know exactly what I mean. If you’ve ever worked for a political campaign that lost, you know exactly what I mean. It’s possible to stay connected with your coworkers, with your ‘work family’, and maybe you will if you put a lot of effort into staying connected. But you probably won’t.
I think we had a death in the American family over the past few days, and with it the death of the America-unifying idea.
I think the office of the President of the United States -- the personification of the idea that there is a shared meaning in being an American -- is now dead. Yes, the Presidency has been sick for many years now. We all know that. But for me at least, and I suspect many others, it threw in the towel for good this week.
I am unsettled. In my gut. A strong feeling of “things aren’t right, and I don’t know what to do about it.”.
My first instinct is truly instinct - survival. “How do I take care of me and mine?”. But that hits my gut as unsatisfactory and too solitary.
So…… I declare a commitment of love to family and close friends - including this Pack.
I think the only thing to do is explore your foundational beliefs, look for those who reflect them and defend them and then tighten the strap on the shield and keep going. Ben often talks about how comics or the pulp of society are a lens to look at reality of the world we are in. Captain American in End Game tightening the strap on broken shield while all looked hopeless seems like the appropriate totem for this.
I feel this too Ben,
All I can add is thank you for sharing your thoughts. You bring words of courage. I hope to cross the ravine with the pack.
Timely publish, Ben.
I have felt wary of our country/leadership for a long time, ever since 9/11 and the Iraqi invasion.
I’m currently plodding thru Chernow’s “House of Morgan” and every finance undergrad/mba should have to read it. Provides a very different context to our current financial plumbing and Governments. I don’t have one or two A Ha(s) yet, but they are brewing (i’m only 60% thru).
The only thing i am hopeful about are that our people overall have decent guts and the recent admin’s quelling of info flow, pardons, media game, legal games, just blew up in their face.
This is not a Trump promotion. He’s going to have a really rough road IMO to get more than 2 big things accomplished (maybe 1).
A lot of what we experienced the last 4 years didn’t make sense and we were told that it did make sense - and that team spent a lot of dough trying to further brainwash people - they were in power - and were simply rejected.
I have hope in that. I think America is still there it’s just really hard to see and has been becoming blurry for decades.
I understand. Know that there is a huge electorate out there that disagree. I have to respect that. I am not angry. My primary emotion is of great sadness that too many of my friends, neighbors and citizens may have put their faith in a false idol.
History will be the judge. The judge will write the history.
I too am fully committed to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice, not just for my grandchidren but for all grandchildren yet to be. There are no other peoples children.
Grandpa Jim, one year older than Clinton, Bush, and Trump
Daniel Patrick Moynihan:
“The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.
Winston S Churchill:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’
Twenty years after The Second Coming, on the eve of WW2, Yeats wrote Lapis Lazuli.
In an insane time, take the long view to try to keep your sanity.
It has dawned on me that I actually am grieving. Grieving for what was and is now lost. Grieving that there is no going back, no path of return.
Yes, that is it exactly, Craig.
there’s a quote, from Khe Hy, that I always go back to on this - pretty much whenever, like you @CSWilson, I realize/accept I’m grieving.
It goes, When someone we love dies, we get so busy mourning what died that we ignore what didn’t.
It doesn’t undo what can’t be undone, but it does jog my brain to go and water those seeds. It’s the only way something new grows.
While I enjoyed this note (enjoyed isn’t the right word; appreciated is maybe more appropriate) I have to say that it does not resonate with me on a number of levels, and I think I know why. This is a generational divide that cannot be breached by words. I cannot grieve for the loss of the American presidency because for me it was sort of always lost.
My formative years, or at least the ones where I learned about what is and is not appropriate conduct for a man, were during the Clinton administration. My college years were the first Bush term, and despite some of the good he did—and I still to this day have positive feelings towards him in a number of ways—he got a lot of my contemporaries killed in another man’s desert fighting another man’s war. It took me all of eight seconds to sniff out Obama as a cynical manipulator and his two terms did nothing to dissuade me from that initial impression. Trump term one was exactly as chaotic as expected. Biden wound up pulling off two of the greatest scandals in modern history. Now we’re on to Trump II: Meme Shitcoin Boogaloo.
At no point in that timespan—from age 10 to my current point of 42–was there a sustained period where I held a strong belief in the idea of a shared notion of what the American Presidency was supposed to be.
I grieve with you Ben, but not because of some great loss, as I have suffered no such thing. Instead I grieve for my inability to grieve.