Greiving

It is spring in this side of the world, the emergence of flower and neon greens bring in me a sense of renewal after a lonely winter. What a winter this was. February lasted several years.

I have been fully vaccinated for a month. I got lucky. An early taker of a left-over vaccine in a community health center. I cried my eyes out as I thought about my mom, alone, living in distant reality where only hope and humor keep people going. I thought about all the moms and the dads and the parents that have not seen their children, and those who never will. The second shot felt more like an administrative procedure. It is so easy to forget how remarkable science and people are.  

Before I was a dad, I never felt afraid of dying.  I felt that when the time comes, you can fight, you can refuse to participate and yet, there is nothing more natural than dying. I think a lot about it. Death has not been a recurrent topic in my life, and I fear that in the coming years I will be confronted with the massive accumulation of loss. It is hard to tell. It has been a year since home became my universe, yet I can feel how much I have aged in these months.

Since I became a parent, that fear has become acute, present. In these times, a daily companion. Death and despair and hope and joy are all around us, from zoom call to zoom call. I sit with this fear and try to think about how to honor its presence, how to sit with it. Then, I think about switching the laundry and bring the leftovers down from the freezer. Sometimes these thoughts have to learn to take turns too. I think about dead time, time to rest and I have sadly realized that I have forgotten how to do nothing.  This is part of the price you pay when you try to center care as the guiding principle of your life: you give all of you and self-care feels indulgent, like ice cream for breakfast.

As the sun stays in my window a little bit longer each day, I have allowed myself to find small pockets of time to sit and get some needed vitamin D. I see people walking by unmasked, kids running and others working in their front yards. And then, I think about the boy who sold me soap bars in the Medina in Rabat or the Black young woman who offered me a chair in a small store blasting Preta Prethina in Sao Paulo. They come into my presence at random times, during work meetingss, building boats with colorful magnetic blocks or flossing. It has taken me a while to realize that I am grieving.

This was the same thing that happened when my brother died, I was captured by the memories of his presence suddenly like a water pipe that burst in the moment that you least expect. For the past year, I have been on emergency mode, on alert, stressed and sleep deprived. Now, I am wandering the rooms of an empty house, the life that used to host me before this plague came. The life that I have crafted for many years -with grip and love- is gone. This is a new life in a new world and I am coming into terms with the notion that surviving does not mean living and living demands to create space to let go.

After a year at home, my toddler will go back to school. The day is set. He is ready. He needs to share his stories of made-up places with other kids, he needs to learn the bad words that other parents say at home when they drop the milk or hit their little toe. He needs to find his way with his peers. I know all of this and at the same time, as exhausted as I am, I can barely bear the thought of not hearing him laugh and pounce and jump and run to the bathroom to use the potty. Before, I imagined the cost I was paying for working and traveling and living an adult white collar international life. Now, I know what this truly means, and I am not quite sure if I am willing to force myself to walk into those same old shoes again.

In a month, I will get on a plane, people will cross the ocean to see me, to see us. There will be less and less masked people out there. I will get to see friends and people I have not seen. I miss them and at the same time, I am reluctant to let this go. I also spent hours scrolling on social media seeing the place I once called home burning. There is Gaza and India and a painful reminder that the world is structurally an unequal place. So unequal that still today, in no country, men do as much care work and domestic care than women. It feels indulgent to think about summer trips when the world is in a critical state.

So, I am grieving, and I tried to find moments to let this sink like a stone in a pond. I try not to interfere with the daily rituals of the life together at home. But some days, I cannot. In this process, I have to take myself out of the patriarchal hole and talk about my feelings, messy and unarticulated so I don’t put on the harmful mask of calmness. Despite all the work I have done to get rid of the toxic ways of masculinity, I still have this mask around, just in case.

This shall pass too. Things will change and flowers will bloom, and we will find our way to see each other and meet each other. We will develop new rituals to celebrate the things and the people who are no longer here and the joy of those who are still around. As I let this process run its course, I hope to have the will to create space for others who are grieving too so we can hold each other until it is time to move on.

Sending love and solidarity for all of you who are seeking new answers and exploring new questions.