Sunday Bookmarks #5
I find it increasingly difficult to write about myself, my own head is constantly telling me to stop centring myself and my problems and my world view in everything I write but that seems to be the only way I know how, and if I don’t do that I stop writing altogether and what use is that. So here we go again.
READING //
Many things but taking none of them in it seems. I am participating in Disability Readathon this month, and thus reading a lot about sickness and being sick. That seems to be taking its toll on me, and yet I feel like I must keep going in order to tell others about these important books so they will begin to understand the wide-ranging lives of the Disabled community. I use reading as a barometer for my health, in a roundabout sort of way. If I can sit upright and devour a 300-page paperback in an afternoon then I know I am doing ok. If my hand tremors are strong and my thumbs keep clicking out of place, I resort to my iPad, propped up against a cushion, and still, I can read. If my head throbs like someone is sitting atop my skull, I use audiobooks with my eyes closed. The worst of times is when even the noise of the narrator reverberates around my brain, leaving my ears ringing, those times I have to concede, I will not read books today.
Last night I started Infinite Country by Patricia Engel, (Released May 27th), I needed a break from the mirrors. We talk often of using fiction as a mirror to ourselves, and yes, while it is galvanizing to read experiences to which you relate, it is also tiring. That is of course a privilege, I can find mirrors readily available in fiction, and the same cannot be said for communities who are so often misrepresented or ignored entirely.
Infinite Country took me out of my own pain and straight into someone else’s. We flit between a juvenile detention centre run by nuns, a young family overstaying their visa in America and the history of Colombia, a capital city in near-constant war, between narcos and law enforcement, young gang members and old territory bosses. Short chapters, moving timelines and the threat of deportation looming over the families kept me reading long past my designated no screen time. Engel toes the line between an immigration story we have read before, an America that seemingly holds all the answers, and the grim reality when the mirage of success disappears.
I, with the rest of you, have also been enjoying this new photo spread of Louis Theroux cosplaying as an extra in Dallas Buyers Club.
THINKING ABOUT // Who decides who we get to mourn
I briefly recall in bookmarks past, saying I was not using this as a way to divest news, share hot stories or moan about the state of the government. Alas, times have changed and here I am. I am also aware the following thoughts may read as confusing for those of you that do not reside in the U.K, all I can say about that is, for a country so small, we are seemingly obsessed with ourselves.
On Friday we heard the news that the Duke of Edinburgh passed away aged 99, thus the floodgate opened and Twitter was overflowing with scorching hot takes. The Guardian cited him as ‘A different kind of masculine ideal’, there were lists of the 10 worst racist things he’s said, those same racist things being passed off as ‘mishaps’, a long list of people making the seemingly radical statement that all death is sad, and the toxic positivity brigade was also out in full force. While I have little interest in the death of an old man I never met or owe anything to, I was fascinated by some of the responses, who knew there were so many millennial royalists hiding behind those liberal facades.
Many women who are seen to speak for some of us, the seemingly socially aware, middle class but -cool- and tapped in, the likes of Pandora Sykes and Berdinane Evaristo, chose to fixate on the loss as deep sadness in losing a partner, a marriage of 73 years come to an end. Yes, that does seem sad, losing your husband must be devastating, and yet, of the 150,000 people who died in the UK in the past year, how many of those were husbands? Maybe that is glib, not all of them have done for the country what HRH Prince Phillip has (although I am not entirely sure what that is). This faux feminist angle of viewing the loss as a loss of the Queen’s partner seems flawed in its conception. The grief the family has over losing a husband, a grandfather and numerous other familial titles he held, is for them to hold, and to subject a nation to that public mourning, after a year like no other, where COVID needlessly killed so many as a result of negligent governance, seems hard to justify.
This week we also lost Richard Okorogheye, a young man whose body was found in a pond after being missing for two weeks. The police told his mother prior to the confirmed dead, that if she ‘couldn’t find him, how could she expect the police to?’ The racism intrinsic to our police force is well documented, and although many insist reform is underway, incidents like these show us otherwise.
This month we also watched a vigil for Sarah Everard descend into arrests, watched the police apply unnecessary force to those mourning the loss of a woman brought about by the very hands of that institution. Soon after Friday’s announcement, the news was flooded with images of Buckingham Palace, hundreds gathering (many maskless), to lay flowers and pay respects, and all I could think was, where were the police?
As we enter 8 days of ‘national mourning’ for a man who most of us never knew, I cannot help but grow more bitter at the way our country chooses to celebrate some and forget about others. Yes, maybe we can grieve the loss of a royal and also have space for Richard and Sarah, I am not a believer in binaries. It just seems that the weight of one life is being publically valued over the others, and that must hurt for all those who’ve lost a loved one too.
Further Reading: Judith Butler’s Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence & Necropolitics of COVID 19, Drawing on the work of Achille Mbembe.
LIVING WITH // What can I do but hold your grief?
(CW / Death)
Dedicated to Max and Caroline
Everyone wants to help me, wants to make sure I know they are there for me, but I need them to know I am there for them too. Nothing is as permanent as loss of life, these past 12 months we have collectively grieved for so many lives that didn’t need to be lost. I feel grateful I haven’t lost anyone immediately close to me from the virus, but that must only be luck considering the statistics.
We talk of the grief in illness, the loss of independence, but it feels as though it pales in comparison to the grief of losing a loved one. I am grieving a body that works on its own, but I simultaneously can hope for a body that may be repaired. I am constantly grieving my past self, the iterations of me that no longer exist. I am no longer someone who stays out all night, I am not the last one on the dancefloor or the first one to order drinks. I have to let my body dictate my day and not the other way round, the jobs I do in the future will be dependant on my health prognosis, it is no longer enough to just want to do something or go somewhere, I have to get a second opinion, check in with this bag of bones and see if they mind giving me a day off, to enjoy my friends and a drink on the green, without seeking revenge for the following week.
With the death of previous selves inevitably comes the loss of others too, some people can’t handle sickness, my theory is it reminds them too much of their own mortality. Others are just selfish, they don’t do compromise, and maybe that’s ok, I probably used to be like that too, illness made me compromise, I have to bargain with my body if I want to get anything done, so maybe I have some admiration for those who still feel as though they are entirely in control.
One of the worst parts of being sick is people thinking you can’t take anything else. Collectively we have always viewed a sick life as less, we’ve pitied the ill and mocked the disabled. Even now, those who click and share videos of people in wheelchairs ‘defying the odds’, young women using mobility aids and deeming them ‘inspirational’, are perpetuating an idea that a disabled life must be exceptional to matter, the proximity to health or able-bodiedness is what makes a disabled person good, their ability to function in life ‘despite’ their illnesses, hurts all of us. A life is worth the same whether it is sick or not, I know that, I hope you know that, it is just everyone else left to convince.
When you are sick it seems others don’t want to burden you with sadness because surely your life as a disabled person is sad enough. But they are wrong, we can’t carry your shopping or come over and bake you a cake, but our listening ears still work, we are still here. When you have grief, let me hold it for you. Look at my record, I am grieving for a lost sense of self, for a life I won’t have, the 20s that I wasn’t hoping for and a 30s that might be worse. I might be sick but I can still hold space for you, for your loss and sadness. I know it is not the same, but I have space for sadness, I promise.
Catch you all on another part of the internet,
Hannah