Life goes on
Last night, while people mourned their loved ones, homes, business, and jobs in LA, Miguel and I went to the theater. While wars raged around the world and people mourned their massacred loved ones and razed cities, we laughed for 80 minutes straight and had an amazing time. We did as people have done for hundreds of years – the difference being with modern technology we are so much more aware of the pain and devastation experienced around us.
It is a weird feeling this hyperconnectivity. We have access to the intimate details of the grief and loss experienced be those in Palestine, Ukraine, or LA. Yet unless it is in our community, where we can see it, smell it, and directly feel its impact - it all remains distant. We still manage our kid’s activities, show up for work, and enjoy our hobbies or entertainment or whatever. Because life goes on.
I often struggle with how to respond in these moments of crisis. Posting anything about the tragedies online feels performative at best and opportunistic at worst but is probably still a necessary signpost that we’re paying attention – that their grief is being witnessed.
Offline, Miguel and I have taken turns speaking with our LA friends and checking the fire maps to see if our friends are in imminent danger. I did the same with many of my Jewish friends after October 7th or with anyone I knew that might have been in the path of a storm nasty enough to get a name. We make donations, we volunteer where we can, and our hearts break out of empathy.
But life goes on.
This is probably one of the most disorienting facts for those that are grieving. That while our world is completely unrecognizable, there are others who are wholly unaffected. They can witness loss, register it, and still have time to stop for a grande iced latte or, say, go to the theater.
After Adelaide died, I was so angry at everyone I saw going about their day. How was it that my world was destroyed yet for them it was just another Thursday where they did regular Thursday things. Didn’t they know what had happened? Couldn’t they see the devastation on my face?
And now here I am at the theater, enjoying a play – a hysterical comedy at that – and questioning whether it’s appropriate to post the photo. Had I come across a photo like that after Adelaide died, I would have been seething, "must be nice for them to be functional enough to leave the house, to sit amongst others and laugh.”
Five years on the other side of Adelaide’s death, I don’t blame myself for my grief-fueled anger – I also don’t blame others for continuing to live their lives in the wake of my loss. But the memory of that feeling hasn’t left me. It was so overwhelmingly powerful I don’t imagine it ever will. Which I suppose is why I hesitate to post anything light-hearted or that resembles self-promotion when we are in the thick of a tragic news cycle.
The thing is, if everyone stopped living at the first sign of a crisis there would be no life to come back to when the embers had cooled.
Life must go on.
To those that are grieving, that are jealous or angry or baffled that the world is still spinning. I get it. It’s not fair, it never is. But life will go on because it has to. Maybe it spins onward so that when the grievers are ready to test their balance again there will be those of us waiting to steady them… and then offer a great show recommendation.
Life will go on AND we need it to. Otherwise, what are we living for anyway.
Photo ID: Miguel and Kelly sitting in a theater holding up a playbill from the Broadway play, “Oh, Mary!”
