Memorial Day: on death and bullying (warning: violent content)
Photograph ©2022 David Bivins
In the United States, Memorial Day is a federal holiday set aside for mourning those who have died serving in the armed forces. It has also become the unofficial kickoff of the summer season, and while we do have parades and many visit cemeteries or otherwise honor the memory of the dead, many people take advantage of the long weekend for barbecues, getaways, and the like.
For those of us mourning the death of a relative or friend, I mourn with you. Any loss of life is traumatic, and grieving is important if not always inevitable. Today, with just over one percent of the adult population in active duty in the armed forces (compared with 15 percent in World War II), it is more rare for someone to have lost someone recently to the effects of war. We can choose today to also grieve with the families who have lost someone, even those we don’t know. Their suffering must be vast.
For me, any premature death is awful, regardless of the purpose. I can’t get my head around the idea that we still wage war knowing the inevitable consequences of suffering and death for all involved.
How can I deal with this psychic anguish? I am someone who has suffered relatively little in his life. I don’t have a close family member who died in a war. But I think about this suffering all the time because I think that in a society where we live and breathe together most of the time, a collective bearing of suffering is important. Acting to ease suffering is important.
We all suffer. While suffering affects us all differently, and it would seem easy to assign relative weight to the suffering of others, I think it’s simply safe to say that many of us are in contact with people who have suffered a lot, even if we don’t know it or don’t know the depth of that suffering.
We can all help others by being kind. I’m not a counselor (a sobriety coach isn’t a counselor or therapist), so I don’t have any visible set of tools to help others in this way. But I can be kind. I can choose to not add to the weight of others’ suffering, even if just a little bit. Arguably, the way I vote and do or don’t show up to protest or otherwise affect public policy is part of the equation. But in the everyday movement of life, being kind is powerful. I remember that when my sister died far too young, there were people who hugged me or put their hand on my shoulder and said “I’m sorry. This must be so hard.” I was seen and it helped.
I think a lot about bullying. I was bullied only once that I can remember, punched in the gut by another kid for no apparent reason other than that I played cornet in elementary school. I got through it, and it didn’t happen again.
I wonder about the lessons we teach our children when we bully each other online and on television, grown ups saying stupid shit to each other in the guise of formal discourse. When we demonize entire swaths of the population with our words, it’s not far from calling a kid a fa**ot for playing cornet. Where do kids learn this? I think we know. My childhood friend Scott, another cornet player, was physically and emotionally abused by his father. His dad burned his band music in front of him and questioned his “masculinity” for playing music. In high school, Scott was sent home from school for being drunk and then killed himself in front of his father, who had been called home from work to deal with his son.
Fear, a perceived loss of control, etc. I can’t get into all that right now. My head hurts. But we can choose not to bring hate and ignorance into our sphere of influence.
I catch myself being judgmental a lot. It’s easy to do. It’s also easy to catch myself and follow the whole thought through. I’ve tried this thought experiment on myself: I’ll get angry with another driver on the road. I’ll think “fucking Jersey drivers are the worst.” Then I’ll catch myself and make note of the license plate of every “worst” driver I see for the next few minutes. It’s NY, it’s NJ, it’s PA, it’s GA, it’s FL, it’s T&LC, it’s just everyone. We all drive like assholes. So it’s me. It’s my need to make an assumption about one group of people to justify my anger. It’s stupid and I can do something about it. I can work throughout my life to be less reactive. I can leave earlier so I’m not in a rush and can withstand the grave sin of people cutting me off before the offramp. (If you were to ask my partner if I’m actually getting better at this, she might disagree, but I swear to you I’m better than I used to be.)
Most importantly I can model kindness for my child. I can’t control what he picks up at school from other kids, but I can control how he sees the world through me. I had a thing about starlings (yes, the bird) for a long time. I learned that they were introduced into Central Park in the late 19th century and within years had swept through the country. They bully other birds out of their nests. Their shit is toxic to the paint on cars. They do massive financial damage to agricultural operations. All just because some fan of Shakespeare had a clever idea about making sure that every bird species the Bard mentioned should be introduced to the New World. Well, that story is probably a tall tale and their negative effects on the world are probably wildly overstated. So now every time my kid says something negative about starlings, which he absolutely picked up from me, I have to correct him and tell him I was wrong. And I’m much more careful about this stuff than I used to be.
Be kind. Spread love.
I love you,
David
