Grief

“Who will she be when she emerges from this grief” (Doyle 271).

For three days, I curled myself into a ball and remained on the couch. In hindsight, maybe I was sitting Shiva, minus the uncomfortable chairs. I cried. I watched lightning – the best prestidigitation in the night sky. Grief had physically and emotionally paralyzed me. My heart felt heavy for the mothers, for the fathers, for the siblings, for the teachers, for the best friends, for the neighbors, for the aunts, uncles, and cousins. 

On Tuesday, May 24, 2022, three tragedies unfolded. First, a student was stabbed and died just blocks away from our school. Second, an 18 year old in Uvalde, Texas, killed 19 children and two teachers in their elementary school. Third, my former student died while studying overseas.

Twenty-three lives. Communities shattered. Families forever changed. 

My school shifted to virtual for the remainder of the week, and I Zoomed with students via my couch. As one wise child said, “It just feels terribly unfair. All of it.” I’m not a grief counselor. Nor do I know what to say to instill a sense of hope in such a dark time. So, I deflected. I asked questions, made jokes, tried to offer a temporary distraction from the sadness. I blinked back my own tears to spare this student from my ugly grief. I promised to check in on her later, and I did.

I talked to my friend and colleague who spoke from a place of anger – anger towards our own school, our own administration and Central Office and school board. She reminded me that, “Students need structure. They crave it. There is an abundance of research to prove that. Why, then, do we shift away from it?”

I texted with another friend and colleague who participated in a Q&A with administration yesterday via Zoom. She saw this same anger manifest virtually. I imagined the cat meme with the white lady screaming and pointing her finger. It’s warranted.

So, what do we do?

I recently finished reading Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, which, in many ways, feels like a personal love letter from her to me. She writes about grief. For her, she grieved the end of her marriage. Doyle poignantly asks, “Who will she be when she emerges from this grief” (Doyle 271). I can choose to mourn. I can choose to remain paralyzed. But, I can choose to be someone who problem solves. I want this grief to transform me, my school community, this nation. So, let’s go.

Schools across the U.S. have taken the wrong approach post-quarantine. We have said that children are traumatized from the pandemic, from masks, from change. Yes, this trauma is real. However, we also forget how resilient children can be. When we all returned to in-person school in the fall of 2021, our students needed structure – “craved it!” An attendance policy, a tardy policy, a real grading policy. A new normal. These policies aren’t to be punitive; they can be, as Alice Walker says, “drenched in love.” I need you to show up on time to class because I love and care about you. I would like you to come to school because I want you to expand your beautiful mind. 

When I read bell hooks’ All About Love five years ago, she professed, “Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.” We as educators have the ability to move students forward, wounded but unscarred. 

With a return to in-person school, our administration also modified lunch. For about 12 years, we had four staggered lunches. They were short – maybe 27 minutes – and the kids often complained about shoveling food down quickly or waiting 26 minutes in a lunch line. But, when the school houses thousands of students, this seemed like a practical way to feed them and keep them safe. This year, the admin rolled out a new plan: an hour and seven minutes of freedom. Students could eat anywhere in the building. Walk through on any day, and you’ll see kids lying on the hallway floor, playing pickup basketball in the gym, making up quizzes in teachers’ classrooms. In theory, this is magic! A healthy brain break. Time for students to congregate with friends. A designated period to complete missing work. In a school as large as ours, though, fights broke out, kids sneaked off campus, and then the worst thing happened – a student died during lunch.

In our own community, I want this grief to transform us so that we reinstate policies. We create structure. We keep kids safe. We make kids feel loved. 

The tragedy in Uvalde – only a week+ after the tragedy in Buffalo – felt “terribly unfair.” It felt like Sandy Hook. It felt like Parkland. It felt like why the fuck are assault rifles in anyone’s hands. It felt like the U.S. is light years behind every other country in the world. It felt like the NRA has their fingers tightly wrapped around many politicians’ wallets. 

I did not anticipate the door theory. I should have known Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham would utter nonsense but not a one door theory. One door in. Same door out. This, they said, will prevent future mass shootings at schools, movie theaters, malls, supermarkets. Translation – these fools cannot speak out against the NRA. They won’t. 

Last night on Don Lemon’s show on CNN, a psychology professor from Emory spoke truth. He told us that the Republican party will not ban assault rifles. This is not 1994 when both sides of the aisle collaborated to sign the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act. The professor is not pro-assault rifles, but he is in favor of change. He explained something tangible that Republicans and Democrats could do right now: anyone who wants to buy a gun must be 25 years and older. The professor talked about the frontal lobe’s development and then supported it with astounding statistics. Many of the murderers in these mass shootings are men ages 15-24. Changing the age in which someone can obtain a gun seems like a viable solution. 

I don’t yet know what happened to my sweet, compassionate, thoughtful, brilliant student. But, I cried. She was multilingual. She was brave. She had the potential to pursue anything she wanted. It feels “terribly unfair.” 

Personally. Locally. Nationally. We have the chance to transform this grief into action so that the twenty-three who died this week have a legacy of love and hope. We are wounded, but we are not scarred.