39
had been free of charge
until March). Congressio-
nal Democrats included
national bereavement job-
protection policies in the
Build Back Better Act pro-
posal and then couldn’t pass
it. We recently pathologized
grief in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Men-
tal Disorders under the term
prolonged grief disorder.
And we feel so lonely.
This pandemic is not
going anywhere; there will
surely be milestones be-
yond the million- death
mark. And the “grief pan-
demic” will far outlast the
public-health emergency.
Researchers last year found
that for every COVID-19
death, there are nine people
who are directly affected—
the “bereavement multi-
plier,” they call it.
It’s hard to know what
to say in the face of all this
devastation, but it can be so
much worse to say nothing
at all. What I’ve witnessed,
what I know to be true, is
that storytelling is how we
bring one another into our
loss experiences and offer
meaningful, powerful sup-
port. This means telling
stories about our lost loved
ones—that little joke they
told so often that the rest of
the family would start roll-
ing their eyes upon hearing
the first word, that thing
they used to cook that
somehow made everything
OK, that time they messed
up big-time and taught us
an important lesson be-
cause of it, that special way
they held us in their gaze.
But it also means talking
about our own suffering
in the wake of that per-
son’s death—the longing
we feel when the nightly
phone calls we’ve come
to expect suddenly stop,
the breakdowns in public
settings, the moments we
are completely focused on
something else and then
remember.
Talking about how we’re
feeling, how we’re cop-
ing, what we miss about
our person (or, possibly,
people) lessens the burden
of sadness. Sharing memo-
ries keeps those we’ve lost
present in our hearts and
minds, and reminds us
that the intensity of our
grief is a sign of having
loved deeply. Story telling
is how we create com-
munity, pull one another
through the darkness, real-
ize what others are going
through—financially, psy-
chologically, physically,
intimately, logistically. It
inspires us to speak up formore government sup-
port and protection, and it
destigmatizes something
that should never have
been a stigma in the first
place. Storytelling, not
numbers, is how we make
people feel acknowledged.
And acknowledgment is
essential to the healing
process. This requires our
imagination, not to make
ourselves miserable, but
to make the experience of
grief communal and, most
important, survivable.
In Hamilton, there is
a song about grief called
“It’s Quiet Uptown,”
in which the cast sings
about Alexander and his
wife Eliza enduring the
“unimaginable”—the
death of their child.There are moments
that the words don’t
reach
There’s a grace too
powerful to name
We push away
what we can never
understand
We push away the
unimaginableEvery time the track
comes up on my playlist,
I consider skipping to the
next one. Surely I could
use something happier,
more hopeful, more dis-
tracting, something that
could serve as an innocu-
ous aural background.
Every time, I consider
pushing it away. And yet, I
listen. And then, I imagine.Soffer is the author of
The Modern Loss Hand-
book: An Interactive
Guide to Moving Through
Grief and Building Your
ResilienceVisitors at the In
America: Remember
public art installation
on the National Mall
in Washington on
Sept. 20