Organized fire

The news that Jane McAlevey has entered hospice care hits hard. If you didn't have the chance to meet her, know that Jane was a stalwart of the UC Berkeley Labor Center and hundreds of labor struggles over the last four decades. She communicated how people, collectively, can find their power and fight for themselves.

I've always liked this snap of Jane caught at a board meeting of the Applied Research Center in 2000.

Her organized fire, harnessing anger and pride for people power, has made a difference to so many.

• • •

The news about Jane puts me in mind of this from the wise Kareem Abdul Jabbar:

The past few years has been a relentless stream of days in which someone I care about dies and I grieve the loss. Worse, I’m at an age where I know I will have to face many more of those days. Death. Grieve. Repeat. I am no longer surprised when it happens, the inevitability has numbed me from shock. But not from the sadness. Not from the grief.

At the same time, I realize that each death is like a customer number being called at a bakery—each number brings us closer to our own digits being announced. Then—if you’ve lived your life right—others will grieve for you. Circle of life, blah blah blah.

I’m all for inspirational quotes that embrace the challenges of life with a positive can-do attitude. I do them almost every week. But to ignore the darker aspects of living is to trivialize them and leaves us ill-equipped to deal with them. In a way, the grieving process is a way of honoring your relationships and celebrating a life that is filled with people worth grieving over.

Each day I wake prepared to grieve again. I am not afraid of it anymore. Grief and I are friendly companions skipping stones across the infinite that spreads out before me like a calm lake with grandchildren frolicking on the shore.

It's a time of life. But some people go on too soon.