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no words

My father has a saying for those days where the petty annoyances of life become overwhelming.

If [whatever seems to be plaguing you today] is the worst thing that’s happened to you, you’re doing pretty well.

While this can be vexing to hear when all you want to do is wallow in your own personal misery, I’ve found it an excellent general rule to live by.

Sadly, this has been never more apparent than it has in the past week.

Early Tuesday morning, I rushed back to Chicago to attend the funeral of a family friend. She had been battling myelogenous leukemia for ten months, and a bone marrow donor – a slim hope but a hope nonetheless – had never been found. Mrs. S. was a wife, a mother, a sheer force of nature. SlackFamily, minus younger slackbrother j. who was camping in Nevada and unable to be contacted, assembled to attend the wake. The S.’s were well known in Glen Ellyn, as Mr. S. had been a football coach at the high school. As we drove up to the funeral home, a line snaked out the door. The Funeral Director told us it’s an hour an a half wait from here. We nodded. We’ll wait as long as we have to.

Ninety minutes later, we made it to the front. I grabbed one of the S.’s kids, N. – not even kids, as they’re all in their twenties – I grabbed her and gave her a hug. This just totally sucks and I am so completely sorry, I told her. There are no words for this because there should be no words for this. This is way too terrible.

It’s the way I’ve been feeling for the last few days, as I’ve been writing and rewriting this article in my head. We’ve all been watching the images flash across the television screen, we’ve all been reading the headlines, we’ve all been following the blogs. As I follow reports of refugee families and pets abandoned to fend for themselves and the elderly left behind to die, I think there are no words. There shouldn’t be words.

My friend Mistress Krista coined a term (and if she got it from somewhere else, too bad she gets credit anyway) called grief porn. There’s something about the human condition that compels us to consume as much sadness as possible. To O.D. on tragedy and still seek out more. The worst stories, the most terrible of tales. We can’t get through the day without our daily fix.

I’ve stopped watching the news reports, I skim the newspaper and I skip over the you have to watch this video posts on blogs. I have binged on tragedy in the past week, and I’m done.

That’s not to say that I’m sticking my head in the sand, plugging my fingers in my ears and singing na-na-na-I-can’t-hear-you. It’s that I need to move on to the next step.

Everyone needs time to grieve. Everyone needs time to shout from the rooftops this fucking sucks. Everyone needs the time to admit that there are no words.

But the only way to get through tragedy is to keep moving forward. Keep doing what needs to be done. The grieving refugees from New Orleans need to get through the day, and then the next. The grieving family who just lost a wife and mother needs to do the same thing.

The grieving country needs to step up and help them do this.

There are no words.

Now there’s only action.


The Red Cross

The Humane Society

The Barb Salerno Fund donations can be made here or by sending checks made payable to the "Barbara Salerno Fund" to: The Marrow Foundation, 400 Seventh St., NW, Suite 206, Washington, D.C., 20004.