Many years ago when I was living, teaching and writing in Tucson, Arizona, an hour’s drive from the Mexican border, I became friends with a journalist couple. One evening the wife told me a painful story: a few years previously she had given birth to a baby whose heart had stopped just before labour started. After the harrowing experience of stillbirth, in deep emotional pain, she and her husband had crossed the border. They stayed in Mexico for many months because there they felt free to express and experience their grief. She said the dominant culture in the US showed sincere sympathy with people going through bereavement, but equally expected them quickly to “move on”. There was neither time nor space given to grief. Mourning was supposed to be private, personal, invisible. In Mexico it could be, and often was, collective, shared, communal, vocal and visible.
Today, as we reach the tragic threshold of 100,000 Covid deaths, I find myself remembering that couple and thinking whether here, in the UK, we are allowing ourselves the time and space to articulate collective grief. I don’t think so. “Blitz spirit”, invoked as a symbol of resistance and resilience at a time of national crisis, or the old slogan “Keep calm and carry on”, might sound uplifting but they do little for people who need to express their pain, hurt, anxiety and fear.
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