Words from a broken heart

I’m really not sure how to put my heartbreak into words.

However before getting any further, my friends, let me flag that there is some sad shit in this post.  It deals with death, genocide, torture, the full gamut.  Please be good to yourself as you read.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

I know there are lots of statements and posts from people expressing their grief, their disbelief, their shock at the recent events in Israel-Gaza-Palestine, that have rippled into the world.  I’ve been resisting writing something.  Making a statement. 

But I am sad.  My chest hurts.  I am so, so sad.  I’m turning to something that I know helps me process: writing.

How do I put my thoughts and feelings into cohesive words?  Do my words actually, you know, help, out there in the world?  Or are they just adding more… trauma? Excessive, self-indulgent self-aggrandization?  Crap?  I really don’t know.  But I’ll try.

Today on a break from work I was scrolling, as one does.  Scrolling IG (as one does).  I scrolled/skimmed a statement from American Vice President Kamala Harris stating (in part) that she grieves “…with the family of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year old Palestinian-American-Muslim child who was stabbed to death on Saturday.”

I didn’t read the rest of the statement.  I dropped my phone.  I sobbed.  There I was, sobbing in the middle of my work day, having read, having been shocked by, having been stunned by (what are those words?  Are they enough?) the news about the stabbing and death of a six-year old child. I learn later that this child was living in Illinois. But it actually doesn’t matter where he was living.  It was a hateful stabbing, of a child.  A beautiful baby.

I’m the grandchild of World War II and Holocaust survivors.  I won’t go into the nitty gritty details of my experiences here, or the detailed experiences of my grandparents.  Truthfully, I didn’t know about my Jewish ancestry until I was in my 20s.  But that’s another story for another time.

I mention this detail because, despite not knowing about that aspect of my ancestry growing up, and my proximity to collective trauma, I have vivid memories of my grandmother’s warmth, pride, determination, (what’s the word?) that the War was well over.  And what was not said with actual words was that they had survived the Holocaust.  The atrocities that she had experienced for decades, that had been what she had known since she was a child, were done. Over.  In leaving her home country after revolution, after years of Eastern bloc control, after the War(s), after the unspoken Holocaust, she had… hope (is that the right word?).  She was living hope.  Hope that her daughter (my mother) could thrive.  Hope in her grandchildren, whom she played with, and laughed with, and shared the things she loved: music, swimming, nature, public transit, art, city life…  She shared with us this sense of pride, strength, joy, determination.

She built a new future of what she wanted it to be – full of love.

In the eighth episode of WandaVision, Vision tries to comfort Wanda about her brother’s death saying:

“What is grief, if not love persevering?”

(Yes, I am quoting WandaVision).

Is that what this is?  Is it grief? My love persevering for a child in Illinois, whom I’ve never met? My love for all the children who have died across the world from hate? My love for my grandmother and her vision of a possible world, a world she created and enacted to the best of her ability?  My love for my own children, and the world I am trying to create and enact for/with them?  That Wadea Al-Fayoume and other beautiful babies will never create or enact?

This is not a pro-Jewish post, or an anti-Jewish post.  Or a pro or anti-Palestine post.  This is a pro-Love post.

Are these words enough?  Are they the right words?  I’m really not sure, but they’ve all I’ve got for now… Thank you for reading.