A NEW KIND OF GRIEVING

With certainty, I assert that I am a woman "of sorrow, well acquainted with grief." Many of you've read my skittish pronouncements about the angst and agony of mourning and loss.  Simply, grief's panache may well have rivaled an amusement park's scariest ride.  Or a House of Horrors named Grief Refined, that distorted physical, emotional, and spirit-wrenching pain.  I remember Ms. D, our beloved teacher, introducing eager "cub reporters" to journalism 101.   To a person, prescient Pulitzer Prize winners-to-be, we cut our teeth on the "5Ws and H" of news reporting.   

 We feasted on "Who, What, When, Where, and How delicacies essential to producing first-rate, cut-above-the-rest, "lead"(first) paragraphs.  A strong news article. even in a monthly, high school newspaper, demanded adherence to rules.  We learned always to follow the rubric, even when the "H" might stymie us.  Subsequently, I presented this technique to middle school students in gifted education classes where it served them well.

When I shared this concept with colleagues, it worked equally effectively, whether in geography, reading, social studies, science, or history classes. Which returns me to grief, loss, mourning, now starkly mirrored in the virus-carrying, Covid-19.  We know so little about the pandemic; yet, we must understand more, much more! The What and How for sure, but deciphering Who When, Where, and Why, must be addressed within the jangled, twisted, and perverse conundrum of more questions than answers.

Starkly, we must have answers.  Or how else can we grieve and mourn the chasmic illnesses, deaths, and crippling residue of the virus that will plague us like a nightmare we can't outrun? Where can we put the pain, anguish, anger, and fear that grow like weeds in untended patches? Grieving even one death is hard work, but navigating the movements of shock, denial, anger, bargaining, and uneasy resolution for over 150,000 (and counting) Americans deaths bedazzles the mind and produces mental, spiritual, and emotional whiplash.

"Help! I need somebody

Help! Not just anybody

Help! You know I need someone

Help!"

Who can? Who will? Where's the sanity and sanctity of a concept like the 5 Ws and H that affords succor to innocent truth-seekers? Is there a Balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole? How do I make sense of a mind-bending death toll that shows no sign of abating? Especially when distrust, dismay, and what feels like creeping dementia exacerbate it.  "There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead, to heal the sin-sick soul." 

Will you point me to it, if you please...