Holding Vigil Together
- Jenn Jones
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
These tears stream down my face as I sit in a Zoom room filled with strangers tending to my grief. Reading the chat box, I take in their griefs, one by one, holding them with care. I see their pain, their struggle, their sorrow. This is holy ground. A reminder that there is still goodness in the world. That there exists a space where seventy other people care about my grief as I care about theirs. Where we pour into one another. A sacred space heavy with grief and rage, fear and agony, remembrance and yearning. Where we cry together, wailing, sobbing, keening. Where the salt of our tears becomes the ointment we need to soothe the ache of being unseen.
My cousin asks if I can describe this moment,
the heaviness of it, like sitting outside
the operating room while someone you love
is in surgery and you’re on those awful plastic chairs
eating flaming Doritos from the vending machine
which is the only thing that seems appealing to you, dinner-wise,
waiting for the moment when the doctor will come out
in her scrubs and face-mask, which she’ll pull down
to tell you whether your beloved will live or not. That’s how it feels
as the hours tick by, and everyone I care about
is texting me with the same cold lump of dread in their throat
asking if I’m okay, telling me how scared they are.
I suppose in that way this is a moment of unity,
the fact that we are all waiting in the same
hospital corridor, for the same patient, who is on life support,
and we’re asking each other, Will he wake up?
Will she be herself? And we’re taking turns holding vigil,
as families do, and bringing each other coffee
from the cafeteria, and some of us think she’s gonna make it
while others are already planning what they’ll wear to the funeral,
which is also what happens at times like these,
and I tell my cousin I don’t think I can describe this moment,
heavier than plutonium, but on the other hand,
in the grand scheme of things, I mean the whole sweep
of human history, a soap bubble, because empires
are always rising and falling, and whole civilizations
die, they do, they get wiped out, this happens
all the time, it’s just a shock when it happens to your civilization,
your country, when it’s someone from your family on the respirator,
and I don’t ask her how she’s sleeping, or what she thinks about
when she wakes at three in the morning,
cause she’s got two daughters, and that’s the thing,
it’s not just us older people, forget about us, we had our day
and we burned right through it, gasoline, fast food,
cheap clothing, but right now I’m talking about the babies,
and not just the human ones, but also the turtles and owls
and white tigers, the Redwoods, the ozone layer,
the icebergs for the love of God—every single
blessed being on the face of this earth
is holding its breath in this moment,
and if you’re asking, can I describe that, Cousin,
then I’ve gotta say no, no one could describe it
we all just have to live through it,
holding each other’s hands.
As this poem was read aloud, the heaviness in my chest grew. I know I was not alone in this. Tears poured down my face. I began to sob, body shaking. The grief feels unending.
This week I have witnessed the closing of peer respites and peer support spaces. Sacred places of community care and healing erased by funding cuts. People will die as a result. People I love, shattered. Hope feels impossible. And yet, this loss is only one piece of a much larger grief. The world feels like it is unraveling. Wars rage on. Entire communities are displaced, brutalized, erased. The people in power tighten their grip while those on the margins struggle to breathe. Climate disaster accelerates. The ice melts. The forests burn. The air thickens with smoke. The water turns to poison. There are too many crises to hold at once, and yet we must hold them, because they are real, because they are happening.
A friend told me they feel like part of the band on the sinking Titanic, playing as the ship goes down. Watching it sink, knowing what is coming. And yet, here we are, in the waiting room together. Holding each other’s hands. Bearing witness to all that is breaking, all that is being lost. Refusing to turn away, even when the weight of it all threatens to crush us. Reminding each other that even in collapse, even in uncertainty, we are still here. We are not alone. We find each other in the dark. And that, too, is worth something.