Grief in an age of indifference

A neepie lantern (turnip jack-o’-lantern) I carved last year.

I’ll be honest, Halloween, Samhain, and Allhallowtide have been harder these last few years. In addition to not being able to go anywhere because we live in hell and our official public health policy is “be a Gothic Romance love interest and never leave the house again or die, no one cares, you’re expendable”, the staggering amount of death and loss around us is more than I know how to process, be it intentional plague-spreading, war, genocide, or whatever other bullshit we’ve thought up. So yesterday I couldn’t find it in me to put on a costume and watch a spooky movie or light a candle and acknowledge the dead. I just laid there in a low energy lump listening to an audiobook. I was numb in my grief and too tired to keep grieving or keening or screaming when I know it will never be enough and probably go unheard. I cannot hold the world’s sorrow when too many others won’t hold themselves accountable for any of the reasons that grief and sorrow exists but then turn around and demand either performative happiness or emotional labor to comfort *them* for the things they did and continue to do. Because the grief and fear and guilt we refuse to feel goes somewhere and if we don’t unpack it, it will become our children’s baggage and their children’s and theirs and no amount of book bans will hide our sins from them or spare us their fury when the reckoning finally comes.

A Poem and a Few Words

I don’t put a lot of my own writing on here, even though it’s a blog about writing, because many places consider works posted online to be previously published, thus making them ineligible for publication, unless the place in question takes reprints (usually at a lower pay). It’s a bit of a catch-22: share work and most places will no longer take it or don’t share it and it’s not helping you build a fanbase or giving people a look at what you actually do, think, and feel. I know artists with similar problems: sell your paintings and you don’t have them for your portfolio; don’t sell your paintings and you’re fighting over an old package of ramen noodles with the feral cat in the alleyway.

Thus, I have only shared works I have no immediate intentions of sending to short story or poetry markets. However, I recently wrote a poem about my grandfather, who has been in ailing health for some time. I wrote the poem earlier this week and my grandfather passed away this evening (I was fortunate enough to have written it just in time for him to hear).