I am nearly finished with a very short story about a lower-working class grieving mother. Who wants to read that? Probably no one, but it was important to me.
While I admire grief and mourning workers, people who devote their lives to helping others cope with loss, I have found the grief/mourning “industry” to be unfailingly middle class and majorly white. It’s not a conspiracy, it is a function of the fact that middle class people have the time, energy and money to support the industry. It is a natural outcome of how economics, class and race work in our society. We need to change that. In the meantime, there is (as they say) a large under-served population.
There is an old saying my ex-husband’s grandmother repeated a lot, which was: “Poor people are too busy working to nervous breakdowns.” I found it to be true in large part, and applies to grief as well. The poor can’t take weeks off from work to mourn, they can’t afford to travel long distances for funeral (if they could get the time off, which they usually can’t) and they cannot afford counseling. Most fall back on their churches for help, which only have limited resources.
Heartbreak is not having a city bus route go anywhere near the cemetery where your loved one is buried.
For the poor, help is haphazard and social expectations outside of prayer fall under the banner of “stoic acceptance”. Where they land in grief is where they stay.
I don’t know how to reach such people. Despite my own brushes with poverty and homelessness, my background and outlook are steadfastly middle-class. I’m an ineffectual ambassador for grief to that population.
Instead, I decided to write the story.
This, of course, breaks a cardinal rule, so I’m told: avoid writing about death. It’s “trite”, after all, a trick inexperienced writers use to force emotional investment.
But grief isn’t really about death. Death is merely a catalyst for grief. A true story about grief, a genuine story, is about life: those who keep living, even if they don’t want to.
I’m not certain how well I’ve capture the story I want to tell, but I’ve tried. That’s something.
