Grief is a powerful dual-edged emotion that can result in a dull, undulating pain which can be paralyzing and suffocating or, if channeled appropriately, can swell into rage and anger that moves each of us — or societies — to do things that once seemed impossible. Such collective grief, outrage and injustice sparked the “fierce urgency of Now” movement against gradualism decades ago and, I believe, resulted in the election of President Barack Obama, our nation’s first Black president more than forty years later.
Today, we are inanother unique, but tenuous moment that has the potential to move our nation toward unity as the verdict from the deaths of Messrs. Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber was announced, and another verdict for the death of Mr. Ahmaud Arbery hangs in the balance. How we respond in this moment — to our neighbors, in our communities and to our fellow Americans — can make all the difference in a united future. Indeed, future generations and our children will reflect on this moment and judge how we responded to these tragedies and to our fellow Americans.
However, it is not incumbent on us alone to repair this nation. Our nation’s leadership must respond to these crises with the same “fierce urgency of Now” that was required many years ago. Today, the Build Back Better Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives, our nation’s leaders beamed as they touted the “honor of passing legislation for the people.” But these are the very same leaders who stripped job and wage protections for millions of newly bereaved Americans during a pandemic and concurrency of devastation that has resulted in most of us having at least one, and in some cases more, empty chairs at our holiday tables.
If today’s verdict and legislation are a reflection of our values, perhaps we should all be reexamining America’s values, power structures and leaders to determine if they align with the collective experiences of everyday Americans like me and like you.
I am one of those newly bereaved Americans with two empty chairs at our dinner table this year, but I am far from alone. We are a nation in mourning and no one is exempt. With more than 765,000 deaths from COVID-19 alone and multiple mortality epidemics from overdose, suicide, homicide, maternal mortality, mass murder events, and impending disasters from climate change, death, grief, and mourning are raging in every community and touching most hearts in America.
We can no longer afford to be a nation divided or allow our leaders to remain disconnected from our shared life experiences. Let us shed our differences and attend to our common pains because Americanism will be measured and remembered by how we show up for one another during these paralyzing and suffocating moments. We must allow our collective grief to alter this state of chaos and begin to sew our common bonds of shared humanity toward love and brotherhood.
We must say: You’re not alone. We will not allow the quicksands of grief or injustice to swallow you. I will stand next to you. I will outstretch my hand and hold you tight.
This is our unique moment to harness the power of grief and “make real the promise of democracy.” So that forty years from now, more remarkable advancements in America will become our shared reality.
So, what can you do?
In this delicate moment, here are five suggestions:
1) Go outside your comfort zone and make a new friend.
Seek a person who you know has lost a loved one and with whom your values may not be aligned. Get to know them. Get to know their loved one. Do not allow others to drive your perceptions.
2) Support Black and Brown voices.
As these verdicts emerge, use your voice and use your hand to help and hold our fellow Americans to let them know that you stand with them.
3) Hold your federal officials accountable.
Call your U.S. elected officials and ask why paid bereavement leave was stripped from the Build Back Better Act during a global pandemic and multiple mortality crises? Call (202) 224–3121 and ask for your federal official.
4) Show your elected officials who you have lost.
Send a photo of your loved one to your elected officials and let them know that people like you would benefit from advancements in bereavement policies, programs and investments.
5) Tag us on social and let us know who you have lost.
Who will not be at your dinner table this holiday season? We want to know.
For 25 years, visual artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg has comforted families in mourning as a hospice volunteer. And with each new family she’s consoled came lessons about the scope of grief, its impact, and the lack of spaces for people to express their deep sorrow.
Firstenberg brings those experiences to her latest work — a sprawling public art exhibition that honors the 684,400 people and counting who have died from COVID-19 in the United States. “In America: Remember” opened on Sept. 17 and runs through Oct. 3 on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
The display features lines of white flags, evocative of the white headstones in Arlington National Cemetery. Each flag represents an individual who has died from COVID during the pandemic. Visitors are encouraged to dedicate flags to friends and family who died from the illness. People who can’t visit Washington, DC., can share details about their loved one online through InAmericaFlags.org, and volunteers will inscribe the flag and plant it in the exhibit.
Since its opening, Firstenberg has seen middle-aged men break down for the first time. One woman told her she finally realized, after seeing the exhibit, that she wasn’t alone in her grief. And those reactions point to a bigger problem, Firstenberg said in an interview with Evermore.
“We need to stop and realize that America is hurting badly,” she said. “We have to stop and find a way to heal America. And we have to find a way to learn how to deal with death and loss in our community.”
Amazing acts of caring’
For Firstenberg, it all started last year with outrage after some were discounting the deaths of older adults and people of color, who face higher rates of serious health impacts and death from COVID. In fall 2020, as the total number of COVID deaths climbed into the 200,000s, she opened a similar exhibit, called “In America: How Could This Happen,” outside RFK Stadium in Washington.
Photograph by Philip Metlin
“I realized that the number of people who we had lost in this pandemic had become so large that it became easy to ignore,” she said.
“I had to, as a visual artist, use my art to help people identify the enormity of our loss.
“I knew I wanted to do art that would help people visually translate the cumulative death toll into something physical and something they could experience.”
But outrage hasn’t sustained her; the deep expressions of care and emotion from the people who visited the original exhibit did. She remembers a director from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who traveled from Georgia to snap a picture of the display and share it with their team. And there was an ER doctor who wrote out the names of a dozen patients he had lost to COVID on flags and pushed them into the ground before he went on to his next shift.
“I began last fall with a great deal of outrage,” she said. “But when I did that art installation, so many people brought their caring and their grief and their respect and love for those they have lost, and I saw such amazing acts of caring.”
Grief on ‘America’s stage’
This time, the exhibit extends beyond DC in two important ways. People who can’t travel to the nation’s capital can share details online about their loved one, who will then be honored with a flag in the exhibit. The placement along the National Mall, Firstenberg said, is another critical difference when considering the pandemic’s reach across the country.
Photograph by Jonathan Thorpe
“This is America’s stage,” she said of the National Mall. “We have brought America’s lost to its most important space.”
Just like the original exhibit, “In America” encourages participation. It’s designed that way, Firstenberg said, because she knows from her work with hospice that action supports the grieving process. Planting flags in the ground for loved ones is a public way for people to express their grief. The action of walking through the immense field of flags is another way to trigger understanding, she said.
As visitors glance down to read the names and stories of COVID’s victims, no longer is the death toll a number, but a representation of individuals — like the 99-year-old man who eschewed a ventilator to save somebody younger, as one flag notes, and the people who loved him.
Photograph by Jonathan Thorpe
“Each individual flag represents concentric circles of grief — the family, friends, the neighbors, the co-workers, the members of their faith community, and those medical workers who fought so hard to save that life,” she said. “They grieve too.”
Finding hope
Until the exhibit closes, each day at noon, Firstenberg will push more flags into the National Mall as the COVID death count ticks higher. But, despite being surrounded by this sprawling representation of death and grief, Firstenberg is hopeful.
“I am hopeful because I see people walking through these flags and looking down at names and that means they care,” she said. “I really do believe that humanity is going to win out. We just have to highlight it, celebrate it and come to expect it. … And I’m hopeful that this will make people realize that we need to have a better relationship with death and dying. We have to incorporate grief into our understanding of daily life.”
Tell Congress To Protect Jobs for Newly Bereaved Families
Imagine how many families have lost a loved one in the past year. Our nation’s collective grief is inescapable and it has impacted all of us.
Today, there are no federal legal protections for newly bereaved families except for narrow exceptions. Congress must act! Workers can lose a loved one and then their job, all in a day’s time. While most employers do whatever they can to be supportive, some do not and none are legally bound to do so. There are employees who lose their jobs on the heels of losing their loved one.
Tell Congress to protect the jobs of the newly bereaved.
Evermore, along with more than 100 organizations, encouraged The White House to include bereavement leave in the American Families Plan. President Biden heard our calls and included bereavement protections for the newly bereaved, for the first time in our nation’s history!
Now, those employment protections are being considered by Congress. To ensure those protections become law, please make two calls today to ask for the passage this important bereavement leave legislation.
For every one call Congress receives, lawmakers believe that it accounts for 100 voters.
Now, imagine…ten people make calls or one hundred or one thousand…We can make this change. We can protect the jobs of the newly bereaved. We can do this together.
We ask that you call the two Congressional lawmakers, U.S. Senator Patty Murray and U.S. Representative Bobby Scott, and tell them to pass bereavement leave protections for workers now.
Right now, due to unique circumstances, we have an opportunity to push for the passage of bereavement leave, an important jobs protection measure.
The White House and other lawmakers are currently considering employment measures to protect families and we want bereavement leave included in these measures.
Evermore has launched a campaign asking President Biden to consider employment protections for the newly bereaved. We call on President Biden to include 10 – 14 days unpaid bereavement leave in his legislative agenda.
Success depends on all of us doing our part. Please contact President Biden today to ask him to include and support bereavement leave now.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering “the fierce urgency of Now” during the I Have a Dream speech taken August 28th, 1963, Washington D.C, United States.
The Fierce Urgency of Now: Modernizing Bereavement Care
Today, armed American troops guard the heart of Washington, D.C., including the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered one of the most important speeches to our nation in 1963. We must take notice that his words are just as relevant, true and urgent today. Dr. King implored our nation to see the invisible chains of injustice hampering the brotherhood and fellowship of the American dream and democracy.
Yet, a persistent and pervasive disregard for our fellow bereaved Americans continues to plague the soul of our nation as we approach the deaths of 400,000 Americans to COVID-19 and suffer the concurrency of three additional epidemics: suicide, homicide and overdose. These deaths and the life-altering ramifications for surviving loved ones, disproportionately impact black and brown Americans. To avoid a cataclysmic disaster for our families and communities, our nation’s leadership must urgently invest in the modernization of bereavement care.
More than twice as many Americans have died from COVID-19 than who attended the “I Have a Dream” speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The death of a loved one is not merely a personal tragedy, but an urgent public health problem fracturing our families, communities and nation. Bereavement itself, like so many other public emergencies, is not equitable. Across the life course, Black Americans are more likely to experience the death of children, spouses, siblings and parents when compared to white Americans. They are three times as likely as white Americans to have two or more family members die by the time they reach the age of 30.
As a result of their losses, family survivors are at risk for poor physical health, social and economic outcomes that follow them and alter their life course. Poor academic performance or dropping out of school, incarceration, substance abuse, violent crime involvement, and premature death are only a handful of the outcomes for the bereft.
By February, experts project 3.6 million Americans will be grieving the death of a loved one due to COVID-19 alone. American Indian and Alaskan Natives represent four percent of Arizona’s population, but account for 18 percent of COVID-19 deaths. Black and Latino Americans are 2.8 times as likely to die from COVID-19 when compared to white Americans, while American Indians are 2.6 times as likely to die.
The disparities do not end there, however. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among American Indian/Alaska Natives aged 10 to 34. Of this population, adolescent girls aged 15–19 die at three times the rate of their White counterparts. Further, 54 percent of homicide victims are Black boys or Black men. Since the pandemic began, homicide rates have increased nearly 22 percent in 36 U.S. cities, with some reporting records levels of violence. Among the 700,000 Americans who have died from overdoses, in recent years overdose deaths among Black Americans aged 45–54 have risen.
These are not merely statistics, these are real people with real families living and grieving in our communities.
Now, legions of Americans are bereft facing profound isolation, physical health and social and economic challenges. And, there’s little to no policy protections they can count on for support.
When you experience the death of a loved one, you are sent to counseling, but you may lose your job because employers are not required to provide bereavement leave. The death of a loved one is not an eligible event for job protection under the Family Medical Leave Act. When a young child loses a parent, data shows that more than half of bereaved and orphaned children–largely Black and Brown boys — will not access the Social Security benefits to which they are entitled. These children will attain less academically and live in greater poverty which will follow them for the rest of their lives. Why is this acceptable?
Our nation tracks mortality statistics, but not who survives them or what the ramifications are. With nearly $43 billion in research funding this year, bereavement does not make the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) top 300 research priorities.
Death and taxes may be universal, but not for the U.S. government.
Bereavement magnifies what is broken among American communities.
Our nation must act urgently to address the needs of the voiceless, devastated and defeated. Our fellow Americans are not a mere statistic to be overlooked that we fail to act even during the most dire circumstances. It is more convenient to keep our neighbors at arm’s length than to invite them into our hearts and homes. Believing that these losses are personal and not a threat to the health, well-being and economic competitiveness of our nation is wrong and misguided.
Dr. King’s calling for “the fierce urgency of Now” and “to make good on the promises of democracy” remains as germane and necessary today as it did in 1963. As a nation, we can no longer sit on the sidelines while our fellow Americans suffer in silence. We cannot allow these divides to destabilize our families and communities. The toll of inaction is incalculable.
Changing how the bereaved are treated and support will not come easily. As a nation, we must invest in state-of-the art research to drive evidence-based practices and policies. We must standardize these best practices among our hospitals, first responders, therapists, funeral homes, clergy and schools to support those grieving. We must give professionals the tools, resources and support to carry the heavy burdens and difficult tasks associated with the “worst experience” families face.
Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. taken August 28th, 1963.
Last year, Evermore worked with community leaders across the United States to commence federal changes and together, we were successful.
For the first time in our nation’s history, the U.S. Congress passed a provision directing key U.S. health agencies to examine and address bereavement care among their priorities. It took an act of Congress–and an unprecedented death toll–to begin the change that is so urgently required.
However, Congress did not act independently. This change was made possible by those mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, spouses and children who have lost a loved one. Despite their deep pain, they stood up and insisted that their fellow Americans, who will unknowingly follow in their footsteps, deserve better, deserve more. Our nation may be divided, but our work at Evermore is not. Together, we have taken our first step toward a more compassionate, inclusive and respectful society.
We will continue to pull our invisible neighbors into the bright light and warmth of solidarity and back into our hearts and homes. Now more than ever, we must hold tight to our American ideals of solidarity, liberty and justice for all. We are a nation in mourning. We must reconcile these losses and our pain together. They are, after all, a shared human experience.
To the bereaved families of this era, we see you. We will stand with you. You are not invisible or inconvenient to Evermore. We will fight to change our nation’s nonchalance and herald a call to action for our country that bereavement care in America is broken. We will work every day to change our nation’s passive policies, systems and protocols.
We cannot wait. We embrace the “the fierce urgency of Now” and hope you will do the same.
WRITTEN BY
Evermore
Making the world a more livable place for bereaved families.
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For the first time in history, key federal health agencies will report what activities, if any, they are doing to advance bereavement care.Photo by Bob Bowie on Unsplash
As Congress shut its doors and fears of COVID-19 swept the nation, a small group of families and professionals worked tirelessly to advance our nation’s bereavement care system. We know that lack of high-quality, consistent bereavement care is an invisible public health crisis. It touches nearly every doorstep in America. In the wake of overdose deaths, suicides, and mass casualty events and now COVID-19, our nation’s response must consist of more than thoughts and prayers.
Bereavement and its implications on families are not part of our nation’s public health dialogue, or children and families or racial equity.
We can do better.
Bereavement care in America is broken. There are limited tools, few qualified professionals and even fewer protective policies. For nearly ten years, Congress has failed to protect to bereaved parents from being fired.
Late Wednesday, Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s (D-TX-35) office said he would lead the effort to direct key federal health agencies to report activities, if any, they are conducting to advance bereavement care. His commitment grew from listening to a mother whose 19-year old son, Ellis, was killed by a drunk driver. Our small team now had 48-hours to deliver five Congressional members to support the amendment — a tall order for a team with no lobbying firm, no established relationships and a global pandemic in our midst.
Fast and furiously we sent emails to Republican and Democratic members overnight. As offices opened, a mother who lost her 24-year old son, Alex, to addiction called Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE). When the receptionist said, “how can I help you today?” She replied, “I want to talk about my dead son.” She was patched to the chief of staff. We had our first signatory. Less than 32 hours left.
And so, it began. The CEO of Good Grief, a New Jersey nonprofit bereavement center serving 900 children and families monthly, recruited our second, Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ-3). 28 hours left. Shortly thereafter, with the engagement of the president for the Association for Death Education and Counseling, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY-17), chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, supported the inclusion of the language. As did Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-3), chairwoman of the subcommittee on health appropriations, and other appropriators.
Then, the leader of a coalition supporting parents who have lost a child at any age, brought Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL-9) on board. Minutes later, a mother contacted Rep. Peter Welch (VT-D) and talked about life after her 25-year son, Kevin, was killed by a train. Four down, one to go. 27 hours remaining. Four hours later, Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM-1) joined, followed by Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY-4), Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ-5) and Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL-7). Eight signatures with eight hours remaining.
We had done it; at least in the House. For the first time in history, key federal health agencies will report what activities, if any, they are taking to stem declines in health and wellbeing among bereaved families, as well as what tools and resources are available to professionals.
We believe that every member of Congress — and the Administration — should support every American’s access to quality, tailored bereavement care. Whether it’s the urban mother who loses her son to homicide or the rural family who loses their aging father to suicide. Where professionals have the tools, resources and research to respond, support and continue serving our nation’s bereaved families. It is not a partisan issue; this is an American issue.
Bereavement touches all of our doorsteps, regardless of geography, race, religion or wealth. As a modern society, families no longer have to slog through their losses alone. Imagine a tomorrow where individuals, families and communities have the resources, policies and programs in place to facilitate healthy coping, to get us back to work, to contribute back to society.
We are dedicated to making the world a more livable place for bereaved families. We hope you will join us because someday this will likely be your story too.
More than twice as many Americans have died from COVID-19 than who attended the “I Have a Dream” speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.