On Memorial Day, I tried to fly to St. Louis to attend the funeral of my best friend’s brother. Severe weather in Denver, where I was traveling through, delayed and cancelled flights. I sat in the airport for hours, then sat in the grounded plan for an hour, then tried to rebook and switch flight carriers, and doing everything I could to figure out a way from here to there. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t fly from Montana to Missouri to honor Tim’s life, a man I met in college who loved his younger sister and would come to campus with a great grin on his face. On long weekends, Colleen would drive us west to St. Louis to stay with her family. Her parents and Tim would take us waterskiing on the Missouri and Illinois River, cautioning us that if we fell into the water, be sure to close our mouths. Don’t swallow the water.
When I was younger, I didn’t always show up. Unless required by my parents, I’d skip funerals. During my senior year of high school my beloved aunt was dying from cancer, and I shied away.
I spent what would be my last time to see her driving around the snowy roads of the Upper Peninsula in her Jeep instead of sitting next to her in her hospice bed while my mother, grandmother, and aunts tended to her. Her bald head, pale face swollen like the full moon, terrified me. My grieving relatives terrified me.
Now that I’m older and hopefully a bit wiser, I’m trying to show up. I’m trying to show up when death comes, expectedly or unexpectedly. The last time I saw Colleen was in celebration of our collective 40th birthday, she shared that her father recently started to keep a sport jacket in the back of his car in case he needed to attend a funeral. He read the obituaries each day and wanted to make sure that the person who died had a witness. He was attending to the dead. She said he couldn’t bear the thought if no one showed up to a funeral. However, I’m not certain that he ever imagined that sport coat would be needed for his own son, the second of his three children.
The act of showing up is radical and elemental. I’ve come to see how it can occur in both grief and joy – from making a meal for newborn parents or taking a turn to drive a friend to an appointment after surgery. As much as I’ve hid away from the work of grief, I see how much we need to show up for each other in times of strife and harmony. It’s certainly easier in a sense to RSVP yes to the wedding invitation or baby shower, but it’s just as important to show up for moments that don’t require an invitation. Our delights and our burdens warrant the presence of others, an acknowledgement that we’ve arrived, no matter how lonely or ecstatic.
Our current political climate, aided by virtual technologies, wants us to remain at home, disconnected and incensed. When we don’t show up, we forget our collective humanity. It’s easier to accept violence, to spread misinformation and draw boundaries. Showing up is messy, vulnerable. Showing up exposes us to others, and sometimes that’s so difficult that words fail but perhaps what speaks volumes is the sport jacket in the trunk of the car, at the ready when the moment demands. Or it’s when we show up for our country, as millions have done lately protesting, largely organized as “No Kings” rallies, a wide range of policies from the Trump administration like immigration enforcement, the massive firing of federal workers, and attacks on free speech. Across the country, in cities large and small, people are showing up. Showing up to save their neighbors, to save our democracy. This collective action is the ultimate resistance against a movement to force allegiances and foment cruelty, all to serve the monied and powered interests of so few.
Although I couldn’t physically show up to Tim’s funeral, I’m looking at the ways that are at once difficult and easy to be present for others. I may not carry a sport jacket in my car like Tim’s father but what his gesture means is that no matter if it’s a close friend or someone who’s life you’ve read in an obituary column, there is great strength in acknowledging that life.