Loving (in) the Time We Still Have

By Anna Blaedel

I recently spent the day in the cemetery I have returned to throughout my entire life, with five elders I love dearly. All of us kin, claimed by various bonds of love. Our gathering was thick with history and shared knowing. Our sense of connection – with each other, with the land – thrumming sacred, and deep. Our gathering was also thick with the tender grief of aging, of mortality, of illness imparting the inevitability of loss.

I arrived to find an old oak tree I have known for all of my almost 44 years down, fallen, dead. Its limbs were scattered among the graves, and acorns – birthed before the tree’s death – were flung far and wide. As I collected a few acorns for my various pockets and altars, I looked up to see my dad and my mom’s cousin, hugging. Two old men, stooped and embracing. Two men, who have carried me on their backs and shoulders, who have encouraged and supported and mentored me in so many ways, including woodworking. It was anyone’s guess, whether they were holding each other up, or about to go down together.

In a world shot through with organized abandonment and cruelty – genocide and wars, mass deportations and mass incarceration, unprecedented storms and isolation – it is an incredible privilege to survive to old age. It is also so hard, so brave, so tender: confronting death’s inevitability.

A single oak tree, when it is old, can support over 1000 different species of insects, birds, mammals, and fungi. The abundance of acorns was likely due, I learned, to a mast year. During mast years, particular species of trees produce significantly higher numbers of seeds and nuts than usual. More tasty treats for squirrels and their mammal friends; more chances for seed saving, and germinating. Such times require enormous amounts of energy. It is intense labor, growing possibilities, sowing seeds, imagining what is not yet but could be. During mast years, trees practice their laborious commitment to a future they may or may not live to see.

We do not know how much time we have left. None of us, nor us collectively.

What kind of legacy do we want to leave?
What possible futures do we want to seed?

There’s a song I sing most mornings, written by Alexandra Blakely. It is a song about composting shame into shared belonging, loss into deeper and wider aliveness:

 If I’m gonna fall,
    and if I’m gonna change,
    may it serve the whole;
    may it turn a page.
    And if I’m gonna fail,
    and if I’m gonna learn,
    may it serve the whole;
    may it serve the future ones.

How might we change, to serve the whole, now, as well as the future ones?

So many precious lives and loves have been lost over the last few months. Some, beautifully, after long, rich lives. Some, devastatingly, to violence that is as unnecessary as it is preventable.

I have been reflecting on a particular holy trinity of elders, now ancestors, who have lived in service of us and of future ones, of collective life, of pages turning toward freedom. Joanna Macy, Assata Shakur, and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. Joanna Macy, who taught, “There’s absolutely no excuse for making our passionate love for our world dependent on what we think of its degree of health, whether we think it’s going to go on forever.” Macy named this time as a “pivotal moment in history,” an opportunity to pivot from destructive patterns and to turn toward each other, toward the earth, toward life. Macy called this turning “deep time” work: the sacred labor of reconnecting with ancestors as well as future beings, for guiding wisdom and inspiration. From Assata Shakur, we have learned and been given so much. May you, too, have the sacred encounter of finding yourself gathered in witness and protest, led by Black elders and their future ones, in call and response: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom! It is our duty to win! We must love and support one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” And, Miss Major, mama to so many Black trans women, mentor to so many of us. She who held fiercely to the truth that trans people are worth fighting for, and that fighting for survival is best sustained when rooted in practices of love, of devotion, of joy, of care. No one, disposable; no one left behind; no one sacrificed for the sake of electoral strategy. “It’s got to be all of us or none of us,” Miss Major insisted. She wasn’t naive to what that labor required. Her common benediction: “Be safe and stay strong.”

We do not know how much time we have left. But, as Kelly Hayes reminds, “There is no moment when all is lost, and the credits roll. There is no cue that we can all throw our hands up now and give up on each other…If you’re still here, feeling, thinking, and hoping for a way out of this, if you’re still holding onto your values and each other, it’s not over. If you are still breathing and crying, it’s not over. It’s not too late, because too late is a fake idea. The people around you will always be worth fighting for, as will your community, as will your humanity.”

What can we make, out of what we have?
How can we love, in the time we have left?

The woman wearing a polka-dot dress on Canal Street, grounding down in front of an armored ICE vehicle.

The Global Sumud Flotilla, allied not with any political party or government, but with justice, freedom, and the sanctity of human life. Building on decades of Palestinian resistance and solidarity. Sumud, the Arabic word for steadfastness, perseverance, resilience.

Mothers and aunties and teachers, armed only with whistles and love, rushing toward militarized men armed with weapons of war, in order to protect their neighbors.

Each and every person, refusing to let fear or silence be the end, shot at close range with pepper balls, by federal agents, and remaining.

Direct actions and sustained networks of care. Mutual aid mobilizations. Food drives and soup suppers and community fridges. Zine workshops and public libraries. School boards and city councils. Spaces created for sanctuary, protection, nourishment, healing, rest. Countless forms of non-compliance and creative refusal; so many practices of love, insisting it is not too late. Seeds, laboriously cultivated, for futures and future ones we may or may not live to see.

If you are still here, still breathing, still crying: may you, may we, remember it is not too late to live, really live. May we make of our lives a kind of mast year of care, practicing the kind of love that bell hooks called “the necessary foundation enabling us to survive the wars, the hardships, the sickness, and the dying with our spirits intact.” May we love each other and support each other, remembering that, even in our time so thick with loss, “we have nothing to lose but our chains.”