Grief, Death, and Collective Liberation: Labor Day Anniversaries
This post reflects on personal and collective grief. Through stories of loss—both intimate and shared—it explores how grief permeates our bodies, our communities, and even the world around us. Yet, amidst the weight of individual sorrow and global suffering, there is a call for collective healing: to hold space for one another, to witness pain together, and to transform grief into a force for connection, resilience, and collective liberation.
Written by Sonja
Three years ago, on August 30th, I unknowingly had dinner with my Dad for the last time. The last time he was walking. Speaking. Laughing. Recognizable. Himself.
We ate Thai food as a family, on the Harbor Steps. Pike Place Market, Thai food, the waterfront… all familiar parts of our story and time together over the decades. We talked about upcoming travel plans—he was excited about going to Egypt for the first time! My sweetheart and I were soon to be heading to Italy, and my Dad reminisced about adventures he’d had in rental cars in Florence in the 70s. Still laughing at the escapades he’d encountered, created, and delighted in. My Dad liked to travel. And eat. And we were doing both, not knowing it was his final night with us in his sharp, known, cognitive capacity.
A few days later, during Labor Day weekend, my brother called. Our Dad was being airlifted to Harborview after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke. We stopped in our tracks and rushed to the hospital to meet the helicopter there. My life was forever changed.
There are many anniversaries still to come—many painful dates, memories, and experiences to heal from with what followed in his health decline and eventual death. My body holds the heaviness of this upcoming anniversary. I feel the grief circulating through my organs. I breathe. I remember. I come back to the present.
This past week, I treated many patients coming in for grief. A beloved dog that passed away just days ago. A death anniversary for a husband who passed a few years ago. Body pains manifesting from these losses and remembrances. A “global grief,” as one patient eloquently requested support for. Every day, patients ask for support to hold all the pain and suffering of the world, to continue to be able to show up in the darkness.
There are multitudes of reasons to be overcome with grief as our world embraces fascism and our supportive social structures are destroyed. The earth’s destruction accelerates as profits are prioritized beyond recognition. Patients don’t know what others are coming for, yet I can feel the treatment room holding tender space for all these different types of grief—the disparate life experiences that weave themselves together amidst the stillness, offering healing, respite, rest.
Collective qi supports us moving through the darkness. Allowing the shadows. Reflecting all the shades of light. Grief can feel so isolating. Overwhelming. Indescribable. Unfathomable to pull out from. Can our collective grief be magnanimous?
A few of the Webster’s Dictionary definitions of magnanimous include:
Great of mind; elevated in soul or in sentiment
Brave
Exhibiting nobleness of soul
Liberal and honorable; not selfish
May our grief be elevated in soul and not be selfish. May our grief remember that collective healing is resplendent and happening all around us. Collective liberation takes all of us. Grieve together. Work for change together. Remember together.