Grieving Half a Million American Lives
How do you hold a collective funeral for that many souls at once?
500,000 people in a year, gone.
5 full University of Alabama Stadiums.
192 9–11 attacks.
8.6 Vietnam Wars.
500,000 lives in 12 months.
500,000 mothers, best friends, favorite uncles, beloved teachers, helpful neighbors, papas, grandmas, first loves, only children, soul mates.
500,000 givers and helpers and creators and lovers and thinkers and healers.
500,000 silenced laughs and interrupted plans and abandoned dreams and stilled bodies and quieted voices.
500,000 empty chairs and beds and house and embraces.
How do you properly grieve this kind of subtraction of humanity?
How do you adequately mourn the unfathomable scale and the velocity of such loss?
How do you hold a collective funeral for that many souls at once?
You do it intentionally.
You do it by admitting that it’s happened; by naming the reality and facing it fully and allowing it to break your heart, and not looking away from it on your…
