An impressive 2019 recital by a pianist who should be better known, Antonio Pompa-Baldi (head of the piano faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music). The first work on the program is the 2nd Hummel Piano Sonata in the best reading I've heard (at least among the performances on YouTube). The rest of the program is also well worth the audition.
Wife of Israeli military reservist Staff Sergeant Elisha Yehonatan Lober, 24, who was killed in southern Gaza during the ongoing ground operation by Israel's military in the Gaza Strip, reacts during his funeral as she holds their baby, at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem, December 27. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
A member of the Israeli military reacts next to a memorial of her family members Tair David and Hodaya David at the site of the Nova festival, where people were killed and kidnapped during the October 7 attack by Hamas gunmen, on the day of a press conference held by family members and relatives of Nova festival attendees, in Reim, in southern Israel, January 5. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
Hadas Kalderon, whose 3 members of her family, two children Erez and Sahar, and their father, Ofir have been kidnapped, while Hadas' mother and niece were killed, cries in the burned-out remains of her mother's home, following a deadly attack by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip on Kibbutz Nir Oz, in southern Israel, October 30. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Friends and family take cover as rocket sirens sound during the funeral of Sagiv Ben Zvi, 24, who was killed following the deadly infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip as he attended the Nova festival in southern Israel, in Holon, Israel, October 26. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
The daughter of Zakaria Abu Maamar, a member of Hamas' political office, is comforted as she cries during her father's funeral, after he was killed in an air strike, in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza Strip, October 10. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
I'm visiting my mom and her toilet in the basement was leaking. I just spent the last couple of hours fixing it. Then, as I assessed my work, I thought of how proud my dad would have been of me for fixing that for my mom. I was happy for a brief moment & then INCREDIBLY sad. I haven't cried that hard since right after my dad died in 2020. Grief is weird! 😭😭😭😭😭😭 #grief#sadness
I know next to none of you here personally, but I wanted share an incredibly personal message.
Over the holidays my wife died, suddenly, and unexpectedly. I'm devastated, but working my way through it with the help of family and friends.
No one knows what to say, because there truly are no words.
In life, you will inevitably find yourself of both ends of grief, feeling it and observing it. Remember that it's okay to be sad, it's okay to be angry because the world is fucking cruel, but it's still okay to laugh, to smile, and remember the good times too.
The best thing you can do for those going through the pain isn't to ignore it because you "don't want to make us sad", or to tell us how sorry you are, or to send flowers. It is to share your stories, your photos, your memories - regardless of how long it's been since that person has passed away. Even years later, I promise you that pain is not gone.
I am honored to be presenting my work on #FindingtheRightWords in UCLA's Americanist Research Colloquium. I wrote this #memoir w/#neurologist Dr. Bruce Miller about my father's early-onset #Alzheimer's. He became ill when I was a #graduate student in the #Berkeley#English dept. so speaking about this to grad students (& faculty) in the English dept.@ #UCLA is especially meaningful. I'll share what I know now about #dementia & #grief & what I wish I knew then.
@rc_ha_tc. No, it won't be. My book website has links to some podcasts and other events I've done. I can recommend one or two if you want to tell me what sorts of things you want to hear about: #caregiving, #grief, #neurology, #narrative medicine?
“I was in a new state of, ‘Oh, now these are my responsibilities. I'm the person to ask for these things’.”
There’s magic in grief, says Becoming a Matriarch author Helen Knott. And with this magic, you can become anything, she says. But grief is a journey to be navigated and it comes with personal realizations.
If you have lost a loved one, please do not expect of yourself — or allow others to expect of you — that your #healing path through the #grief will be quick, easy, direct, or permanent.
Have been thinking about launching a voice-oriented discord for covid-cautious folk to come together for parallel play and chore hangs. Yet am trepidatious.
Wanting a space for companionship and mutual support, that affords space for commiseration without being dominated by it; yet avoids traps of self-satisfied superiority that seems all too common. Not sure how to pull that all off.
Suddenly realizing, this is why younger me left UU community: alienated by camaraderie around unhealed trauma.
Irony here, is that anyone who follows me knows how much verbiage have devoted to discussing need for collective acts of #mourning.
We need much better tools for processing #grief. Our society is far too quick to respond to any enactment of mourning as shameful—as disruptive to the lives of those who just want everyone else to "move on".
Yet my experience in UU was that in absence of tools to do the work of mourning, some only find communities wherein unresolved grief becomes their shibboleth.
Through the moving stories she chronicles and analyzes so beautifully, King brings us closer to the animals with whom we share a planet, and helps us see our own experiences, attachments, and emotions as part of a larger web of life, death, love, and loss.
Poster suggest that some folk flourished during 2020—incl. someone close to them—while many others were traumatized. Implied is that those who want to still talk about covid don't recognize just how triggering events surrounding its emergence were.
As 2019 came to an end, there were two types of people: those accustomed to their life being shattered, and those for whom that would be a new experience. Pieces are still being picked up.
This is why even before 2020, the morality play of poverty-as-bad-choices served to underwrite #EgoValue for those of #perquisitive#classposture—the #FrosteanBargain promises an unshattered life for being good.
For those denied tools to do work of #mourning, those unprepared to do hard work of #grief, a default on said social contract is world ending.
Until we—who want to work toward better—address this lack of tools for #grief, confront head on societal aversion to #mourning, we will remain tangled in #tensegrity binds.
Denial is incomplete grief. Anger at reminders of loss—unconcluded mourning. So too bargains made about when precautions ought or ought not be taken.
We must do the work of collective mourning—with utmost urgency.
The only alternative is continuing to rail against "denialism" even as fires of burning planet engulf us all.