CW: death, suicide, blood, graphic descriptions
First off, I’ve been trying to write this for about a year. I would reach a point where my thoughts were coherently put on paper, and then immediately another loss, another storm to weather through. And not only did I have to go back and rewrite; but it never seemed an appropriate time. Comrades and I were all hanging on to a metaphorical piece of shipwrecked, trying to stay afloat as more waves crashed over us, doing our best to keep each other from drowning. Everyone becoming more and more exhausted and grief-stricken, just doing our best. I didn’t want to pick at wounds beginning to heal, but I think that is already being done by other forces.
Secondly, this is being written primarily for my own relief. When I found my comrade’s body it seemed like I had tripped a circuit breaker in my head. To couch it in psychoanalytic-ish terms I was all super-ego, completely numb except for taking the next step. I’ve only started to feel real feelings about it in the past 2 or 3 months and it is horrendous. There is a secondary motive for writing this as well: Maybe it will help the next person who has to pick up the pieces. I had experienced and seen death before but never as an adult; never as the person who had to make that call for an ambulance with EMTs that couldn’t do jack shit except for zip our comrade into a body bag. They really, really don’t teach you this in school or anywhere.
Navigating the whole “death system” is a nightmare in of itself, even if you aren’t a gender/sexual/racial minority and/or a leftist. It is expensive, it is messy, it is heartbreaking, and compounds the trauma of losing a comrade. For example, my comrade’s blood family was to be notified – except the medical examiner’s office claimed it was impossible for them to find her family; and an hour later I was making the most heartbreaking call a human can make. Have you ever heard the wailing of a mother who lost a daughter she never really knew? Then came the money costs; it’s not cheap to die. Even cremation can run into the 4 digits. Stacked on top of that is the cretinism brutality displayed by the fascists and the state. Of course, we mock fascists when one of theirs dies, and they do it to us. However, whether you like it or not, leftists don’t go around vandalizing, say, Stratton’s memorial area. We are better than that.
We will all be removed from this mortal coil and will leave people behind who have to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward. All of us at one point will have to pick up a loved one’s pieces. None of us can escape that fate. It makes me sick. So I guess the main point I’ve been trying to flesh out over a year is how to die, specifically how to do so as an activist. At least in the US, you can’t really die without the state intervening in some form or the other. And that can open up a can of worms that people will not be equipped to handle. In favor of not being verbose, I’m going to lay out some mini points of bits I learned navigating with comrades in the aftermath of losing some very loved people.
- Prior Paperwork.
- A will or Advanced directive or hell, even something written on the back of a burger wrapper stuffed into a lockbox. Something to guide the people left behind to act in accordance with your wishes.
- Close loopholes
- An ambulance will come to move the body, and with them often come the police. Before they arrive, you gotta “neutralize” or “centrify” the scene. Take down the flags, arrange the bookshelves so the radical stuff is less noticeable, and so on. Don’t touch your comrade’s remains, however, and do your best to be subtle. The point is to not let their death become a gateway for state interference on the living.
- Cleaning up
- A professional crime scene clean up starts at around $2,500; which I don’t think a lot of people have just laying around. Whenever possible, try to fundraise for a professional cleanup. Believe me, it will be worth every cent if you and your community can pull the funds together. But that’s not always possible, and sometimes you have to make do. Properly research the chemicals and PPE used, always. But understand that the DIY route will definitely compound trauma.
- Love Each Other and Celebrate Life
- That’s all you can do when all is said and done. Celebrate your comrade’s lives and how lucky we are to intersect in space and time – however briefly. Hold each other close while we still can.
I feel better. But, My heart still fucking aches for all of the incredible, awe-inspiring, and storm-like comrades we have lost. Your heart probably hurts too. And maybe one day the hurt will be more tolerable. It is so hard to lose someone, especially such vibrant people who wanted so bad to inhabit a more just world. When you find out the loss, it’s like the world ends there. How dare the sun continue to rise? How dare the rivers continue to flow when loss just sucks the breath out of you? But the sun rises, the rivers flow, and the fight continues.
Rest in power the countless fighters we’ve lost in the past year – we will do better.