On grief

Where does it go?

It will soon be one year since my cats, Sandi & Marmi, died, one shortly after the other, at the age of 16. Their absence is a quiet hole, the kind forming when those who shaped your daily rhythms vanish

Grief never stays singular. It’s been almost two years of a live-streamed genocide in Palestine, where the scale of loss is unimaginable, and each death is someone’s beloved, lives mattering fiercely to another

Grief compounds. It’s been some months since the tragic death of a thoughtful and incisive animal rights activist I knew. Her work was a testament to the belief no suffering is too small to fight against; now her voice is part of the silence. And it’s been a few weeks since we didn’t manage to save two of the four fledglings who fell into the chimney stack. They were alive, then struggling, then still, all within the space of a day. We stayed with them until their cheeping faded, their bodies huddled and hidden, but together. They were important to themselves and their kin and the least I could do when we’d done everything to help them, was to stay until the end

Each of these events comes with its own indelible images and its own degree of grief. For me, they all bleed into one another. If saving one life saves the world, then the converse is true too: every loss unmakes it a little

Where does the grief go? Does it dissolve into the air like the fledglings’ final cheeps, or harden into something sharp behind the ribs? Does it expand and consume us? Or does it change us permanently even if others can’t see that change externally? I see it in the way I way I watch and listen about Palestine, as if bearing witness might somehow keep the numbers from being just numbers. I feel it in the way my hands remember the weight of Sandi & Marmi, though they’re nowhere to be touched. Does it make us despondent? Enraged? Or maybe puts us in overdrive? Or maybe it does it all, on random

For me, grief compels me to witness even – especially – when I’m helpless. It’s in the staying: staying with the dying birds, staying with the screens showing horrors in Palestine which we’re meant to deny, staying with the memories of the activist’s work. And when there’s a chance to act, grief is a current dragging me forward. It’s not consolation; it’s fuel. It reaffirms the courage of my convictions: resistance and love don’t stop when the breathing stops

Grief doesn’t disappear. It lingers, shifts, and transforms us. Whether it’s the loss of beloveds, the crushing weight of injustice, or the quiet passing of creatures too small for the world to notice, each sorrow leaves its mark. Grief isn’t an end; it’s a beginning. It demands witness, even in helplessness, and fuels action irrespective of hope. In bearing it, we reaffirm what matters: the courage to care, the refusal to look away, and the stubborn belief every life no matter how brief, unseen or foreign, holds meaning. The grief stays, and so must we