Grief Demands A Witness Quotes

Grief, what a son of a bitch, Ariel, we have a surfeit of it, far too much, you and me and most of us in this century and the wreckage of centuries that came before. A son of a bitch, but absolutely necessary. Without pain, life means nothing. The tree needs the sound it makes as it falls, so it can be heard, at least in the future, its way of demanding witnesses. Which is why we need funeral rites, great or small, the outpouring of sorrow, the long and short good-bye, like the one your people have just held for Allende, why the worst sin is to disappear a body and deny the mourning, a crime against life because it doesn't allow life to go on, other trees to grow from the soil of the tree as it dies away. And that's why the refrain, do not speak ill of the dead, makes sense. We're not erasing the bad acts, the mistakes and blindness, the cruelty and selfishness, the damage caused to others. But it's healthy to rescue, at least once in each person's odyssey, what's best for the future. And if we become extinct? No last rites, no words about us, no stories told, death will have the last word. So we have to tell that story now, before it's too late.

People who have lived in shame and isolation need all the pride we can muster, not to mire ourselves in a narrowly defined identity politics, but to sustain broad-based rebellion. And likewise, we need a witness to all our histories, both collective and personal. Yet we also need to remember that witness and pride are not the same. Witness pairs grief and rage with remembrance. Pride pairs joy with a determination to be visible. Witness demands primary adherence to and respect for history. Pride uses history as one of its many tools. Sometimes witness and pride work in concert, other times not. We cannot afford to confuse, merge, blur the two.