In order to begin healing, grief must become resolve
My best friend, Chris Brodman, was the first survivor of the Pulse nightclub shooting to pass away. He died of a brain aneurysm almost three months to the day after the attack. My relief that he had survived that event was immediately replaced with poignant grief that threatened to overwhelm my life in every capacity. We all watch movies and television shows where people shoot guns all the time — sometimes one in each hand — and yet, it never occurred to me that the stress of surviving a shooting could kill you. But it can.
Five years later, so much more tragedy has befallen our country — the shootings in Las Vegas, Parkland and even more recently in Miami. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic struck and has taken 600,000 people from us in the course of a year. Our nation is grieving and trying to get “back to normal” — desperately, obsessively. In psychology, they recognize that as the first stage of grief — denial.
But the only way to begin healing our communities, our cities, and our nation is to recognize the truth: that something awful, tragic and terrible has happened to us. Alone, that can be a terribly bitter pill to swallow. Our loved ones who are gone are irreplaceable — and the combined effect of losing them, having our routines and our very lives disrupted, and having to face an uncertain future is daunting for all of us.
I’ve met many Pulse families and survivors and listened to their stories, hugged them and swapped tales of how wonderful our loved ones were. We smile and nod at the joyful recollections which temporarily banish our mutual tragedies. In those brief moments of respite, we know the pain isn’t gone forever. But for an instant there is a recognition that “This, too, shall pass.”
Chris once made an entire theater convulse with laughter — we had gone to see Quentin Tarantino’s “Grindhouse” (a movie designed to be so bad that it was purposefully comical) and for some reason he found every joke hilarious. What started as unrestrained giggles soon turned into wacky, side-splitting mirth that the whole audience enjoyed every time something else happened in the film. They began to anticipate his side-splitting glee — and howled anew after each renewed fit of hysterics the movie threw his way. Those three hours were the funniest of my life. My sides ached for days afterward and I treasured seeing my friend so alive and happy.
It’s those kinds of memories that, five years after Pulse and one year into this pandemic, can help us face the other mountains we have to climb and the rest of the work waiting to be done. We can do it with reluctance, regret, despair and anger, and let the tragedies define us — or we can roll up our sleeves, hold each other’s hands and let our resolve to honor our loved ones give us the courage to face our trauma, to heal, and to have hope.
The great poet Maya Angelou once said, “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” If we stop pointing fingers and start listening to each other, we can get through anything — even all of this. We can move beyond labels like Republican and Democrat, Black or white, gay or straight — we just have to be willing to try.
Our loved ones deserve us to honor them in that way, at the very least.
If we stop pointing fingers and start listening to each other, we can get through anything — even all of this. We can move beyond labels like Republican and Democrat, Black or white, gay or straight — we just have to be willing to try.