Their specific light.

The dead are counting on us to do the work of love.

The dead are always with us. You know this, right?

This winter has brought this home to me. Two of the feral cats my husband and I care for departed for sunnier climes, including the redoubtable Chappie whom I wrote about before. I was walking one cold morning and there he was, pressed against the stone wall not 25 feet from our house, paws tucked under his chin as if asleep. But not. That unmistakable not-sleep of the dead.

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Bob Weir left us, too. Guitarist for the Grateful Dead. His passing brought back memories from my brief season as a deadhead. Particularly a 1994 concert at Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon. Seal opened for them, but what I remember most was the scene outside the venue. Someone brought a trampoline, as you do, and people took turns dancing with gravity - jumping, flipping, dropping, laughing, and rising again. At the food stalls you could get a full plate for a poem. The experience remains a touchstone of what community can be.

And now Renee Good and Alex Pretti are dead in Minneapolis. American citizens killed by other American citizens, while exercising the rights guaranteed in the document that, more than anything else, makes them American: The Constitution. I would say it is shocking, except that I am not shocked.

I feel incredibly sad for their families, first of all. Losing someone you love, their specific light, is so painful. But to then have their character trampled so that the power drunk can stay drunk. How much pain that must add.

I feel angry, too. That most unhelpful emotion.

Mostly, though, I feel a huge NO gathering inside. It is time to say no to this version of ourselves. The smallest, most craven version, falling prey to our fears and doubts, our worries that we are not enough, or that there isn’t enough. We are and there is.

The power that originates in our hearts, a force we call love, that power is unstoppable.

With it, we can give a sickly cat a new lease on life. Through it, we can create a community where kindness is currency. And from it, we can stand up for the most vulnerable. Which is all of us.

So yes, be sad, be angry, feel all the things. But remember that the dead are with us, bearing witness to our anguish, rooting for us, and relying on us to bend the arc toward justice for all who follow. That magnificent feat will only be accomplished through love, and this is our work now.

We have the power to do it, too. I know this for a fact.

XO Jean

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Jean Shields Fleming is the founder & editor-in-chief of Certain Age, a Substack top 100 publication. Her novel Air Burial was published by Carrol & Graf, and you can read an excerpt from her latest novel, All The Reasons Why.

Image: Glass lily from Getty Images

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