You swipe through your favourite news site while sitting in a train, and you enter the typical bombardment of information. Can you feel the contraction of your chest, the narrowing down of your attention, the closing of your heart?
I like to consider myself a helper, but when our son, Jon, took his life on Easter weekend of 2019, I could no longer think of myself as a successful helper. In my own eyes, I instantly became a failed one.
I am writing in the harsh light of a lantern and my blazing wood stove on the fourth night of a “public safety” blackout currently forecast to last for three more days. I am not near a fire or an evacuation zone. But that could change as quickly as a new fire report.
At such a time, are the arts irrelevant, a luxury? To the contrary, they have an essential place both in grieving for what is lost and in imagining new human possibilities.
