November 6, 2024

I stand in my closet this morning with a searing heartache, feeling at any moment I’ll be shived by an avalanche of stunning overwhelm that promises to spill my emotions into a puddle of bloody numbness all over the carpet.

“Concentrate!” I say to myself. “You must get dressed. You must function and go to work.” But I know what I really need to do. What I really need to do is to go to a funeral.

I need to go to a funeral. I need to cry. I need to grieve. I need to mourn the immeasurable and catastrophic losses we have just experienced. I need to look into the eyes of the other funeral attendees, recognize their searing grief, and validate each other’s pain. I desperately need to share their loss and cry with them.

I need to express the disillusionment, the terror, the anger of having grown up being constantly promised an American democracy that was exceptional. A promise I was made to acknowledge every day when I raised my hand to say the pledge of allegiance in school, for our American democracy where the right to equality, the right to the American dream, were within all of our reach.

I need to be angry at this lie and all the hope it has stolen. I need to rage at the deception of a story of a nation that only applied to a few, and never to the rest of us. A trick used to control us.

I need to break some glass. I need to burn something down. I need to cry and cry and cry and cry…

I need to go to a funeral to say goodbye to an idea that never developed, to a place that never existed, to hopes that never actualized. I need to bury them with the pieces of me that died alongside them.

I chose the black dress I wore to my father’s funeral. I dress and walk out the door. I will never walk back through that door again as the same person.

Today is a funeral.

Today is a funeral.