My friend called a few days after I had started to write this.
Another one of our beloveds lost a parent. we breathed in silence for a while, and then talked about the logistics of loss, and how we share this too with each other. we spoke about the aches we collectively share, and those we do not. we left with notes of who to each call next, and promised to send pictures of flowers when we saw them.
as I sat with myself after, my body was transported back to the feelings that land when you first learn that your world has been so changed. it is easy for it to become so familiar again, because it never really goes away, and the body has a way of storing and remembering. I describe it as the feeling of being chased, without the clarity of by whom and what for. like perpetually living in a loop, waiting for the other shoe to drop, even when you are not quite sure what kind of shoe to be looking out for, so every pair gets you startled. it is never ending dread of what you do not know, and many shallow breaths. you see, it is so easy for that feeling to come and stay, and be so present that you do not know anything else.
It is recurring, yes, but we are not called to tend only to and from that place. it is not what it means to be human, and so, slowly, we must nudge out of it. It is a practice to carry, and cultivate. and so, as a result, my relationship with loss, and grief continues to change over the years.
on the days when I believe in the conspiring of beings, and the beauty of the moon; on those days, it evolves into an understanding that the dead are never really dead. those who are yours, are never really gone. abanyu basigara bari abanyu. It is comforting this truth of mine, and it allows me to feel grateful for our transience nature and the fluidity that is this experience, while also knowing that there will be more. It is not so much the heaven with golden gates and scrolls of names that comes to mind as I indulge with what more this could be. instead, I see the names and faces of those I have known, and loved. there are voices that tell me that the rooting goes far back, and runs so deep, connected through many others. it is the same sort of feeling I get when people exclaim that I now look just like my grandmother. I have memories and nudges and feelings beyond what can be named and touched, that create the space for whatever else to exist. some days this knowing feels more tangible than others. some days it ministers no comfort. but still it is a grounding that can always be returned to.
There are many types of loss. and there are many things that cause our hearts to be heavy and our flesh to ache. some we can name, some we can not. some of these we can share, and others are ours to lug. we find that there are many times when the days are glum, and how we share in these too, defines the kind of human experience we get to have.
and so, here I am writing and thinking through how we do that. how we share with each other, making this our life here more tolerable, perhaps even pleasurable. how do we hold the sorrows and tragedies of our lives, even without being all consumed by them.
My mother, she says to us even now, nakakye, nakahango, akutwine, ntukabagana. what we have, we share; big or small. It has been a foundational principle in my life, and perhaps explains why I have veered further and further towards dreams and visions that centre just that. what we have, we share.
Sharing, is something that for most of us, we have had to learn to be in relationship with. As children my parents said to us often, murekye ajywaremu, mbwenu yana’zakugirya. “let your sibling wear your shirt, they won’t eat it after-all.” We were taught and shaped to appreciate why it was so important, and while it did not always feel comfortable in the moment to share our favourite shirt, or the last bits of cake, we learned to still do it. In order for us to share then, the material conditions of our lives should have led us to believe that we are able to do so. or at very least, think it imaginable and valuable. it does not mean that we must have a lot, only a knowing and perhaps belief that there is enough to go around. It seems like such an innate way of being in my head, and yet we continue to experience a reality constituted of institutions and systems for whom this very idea is antithetical to their existence. and so sharing becomes a practice of being that we must cultivate, and in so doing, disrupt some of what binds and causes us to suffer.
to share is to care. to care is to share. a doing word, so to speak. it is a thing you practice and nature and remember to do. so then we ask, what does sharing require. what does it need in order for it to feel good, and what does it beget. what if indeed there was enough to go around, such that we could all share, holding each other through it as we did.
On the days when God seems to be in reach, I dig deeper into asks about vitality, life, death and the cycles in our control and out. It comes to me, that the way to be alive through it all, is in standing in witness to each other. I ask then what it means to be compelled by the love for community and how in standing witness to each other, we can share the load of the pains and aches we shoulder.
We are all in need of some saving and some holding.
I think then that if we begin from this call to share and bring ease to each other, so begins the work of repairing. that as we look around, acknowledging the ways our relationships with self and others could be better; the decline of our quality of life, agreeing that the way we work, live and commune with the rest of the earth is harming us, and that most of us do not even like to live like this. then, we can not in the same breath, also argue that we can do nothing about it. we would as James Baldwin puts it, ask how not to become accomplices to our own murderers.
It is a way of being that contests the rules, and thus the inevitability to which we sometimes have accepted this world. what we have, we share. we hold each other how we can, carrying the joys and sorrows that come with being human, at this time.
there are more answers or questions to this, but now I will say only this,
May you be held, and may your wells run deep enough, that you can hold someone else.