Where The Sunset Hovers Like A Sound

Dark hills at evening in the west,
Where sunset hovers like a sound
Of golden horns that sang to rest
Old bones of warriors underground,
Far now from all the bannered ways
Where flash the legions of the sun,
You fade—as if the last of days
Were fading, and all wars were done.

                         Edward Arlington Robinson

I am trying to write about grief and failing.

A few years ago, I spent a lot of time studying grief, mainly, storytelling as a response to that awful emotion.  I wrote 250 pages on it, read countless articles and books, lived with it and tried to understand how grief works.

At that, I also failed, evidently, because I am still raging against the dying of the light.  I am still powerless against it, as life keeps reminding me.  I still have nothing of comfort to say to those who are suffering.  I cannot even find my way through the fog myself.

This is what is happening in our world right now:  people are grieving.  Loss and grief are always with us even in an age without COVID-19.  But COVID-19 brings it home; it knocks us off our throne.

We see husbands and wives separated; lovers who must love from a distance; friends and family taking sick and facing death; panic over the lack of ventilators, medicines, protective equipment; front line health care workers facing death to care for others.  Everyone grieves; everyone is scared.  How long will this go on, we demand to know.  Answers, though, are not forthcoming.

Those paramilitary protestors storming the state house in Michigan, they are grieving and afraid.  Their lives and livelihoods are controlled by a virus.  It is not political, despite what our president tries to do.  It is a virus, and you cannot shoot a virus with an AR-15.  So they rage on and threaten and bluster.  And the virus moves among them and may render them victims in the coming weeks.

Those people flocking to Huntington and Newport Beaches are grieving in fear, too.  They want their old lives back, the ones where they could walk along the surf and spend the day in the sun.  But those lives are gone as well.  And the virus lurks, ready to remind us of our mortality.

This virus raises divisions between us.  There must be someone to blame for all of this.  There must be some “other” who can be held responsible.  It is the immigrants coming across the borders, the Chinese who traveled to the U.S., or rich people, or poor people or homeless people.  The president knew.  Members of congress knew.  Who do we blame for the fear in which we live?  Who should pay for our grief and anguish?

But where does this get is?  If we think the president is responsible, the day at the ballot box is coming, but that will not bring back the dead or assuage the suffering of those who are still sick or about to become sick.

If the president is to blame for anything, it is the way his leadership has allowed fear to infect the human heart in the face of the pandemic.  When you instill fear in human beings, they will react the way they are genetically designed:  with fight or flight hormones coursing through the blood.  Right now, we cannot escape this virus; we cannot put it behind us.  So we fight.  We question the veracity of what the scientists say.  We proclaim our own invincibility by walking the streets sans mask or gloves.  We crowd onto beaches and dare law enforcement to stop us.  We cannot escape the virus, so let’s fight in the name of “our rights.”  The only right we have in the face of the virus is the right to get sick and die.  That is the bottom line.

And then someone close to me died this weekend.  COVID-19?  No, he was tested three times in two hospitals.  No, this was more pedestrian:  lung cancer, COPD, emphysema, a bad heart valve, broke-down kidneys.  But he is now gone and I do not know what to do to lessen the gut punch of grief.  I can still hear his voice.  I will miss sharing books with him.  I cannot forget what he has done for me in this life.  So many things left to say; so much gratitude to convey.  He exists beyond hearing in the realm of memory, now.

Robinson says it in his poem.  There will be an end to the war.  Meanwhile, we stay in our homes listening for the sun to fall from the sky, for twilight to hover like a sound, and darkness, complete and total, to fall.  And we live with our unmitigated grief in an uncertain world.