“On the occasion of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg”

I’m sitting out on my back porch early in the morning looking out into the yards behind my house and the only thought in my head is “How can I live in a world without her?”

And my next thought is that this isn’t the I first time I’ve awoken early from a sleepless night with this thought and a broken heart. There is a disorientation, an instability, a deep disbelief of the world after the death of someone important to you. It feels like there is less oxygen. It feels like you have to move more carefully. And the denial of death always makes me want to wait, hope the news was a mistake, just sit still long enough, patient enough for them to return. And then you breathe and take in reality again. How do I live in a world without her?

When someone dies it’s not just that the world feels emptier without them, it feels like there is something in us that has changed. What is the world without them? Who am I without them?

It’s an odd day to be thinking about identity—as today is a pilgrimage of sorts. This morning I am meeting my colleague Eddy and we are going on a short trip to my hometown in North Jersey. Not because there is anything really special about my hometown, or that there is anything really to do, especially now with Covid, but because in our work and travels I have been close to Eddy’s hometown in Zambia, and now we’re closing the loop on an old conversation and going to mine.

We are mosaics. We are made up of pieces that makes us who we are: we are where we come from, we are where we have been, we are who we love and have loved, and we are what we hold dear.

In American culture there is such an emphasis on the individual—that I am solely myself. But this notion of identity is an illusion and that illusion is shattered when someone dies. In that moment you can see and feel that the person who died held an important support rope for you. You may not have even noticed it when they were alive. But in their absence you suddenly feel vulnerable, wobbly, as if you could topple without their support. You realize that you could be who you were because of them.

It was my friend Eddy who taught me this. In our work in Zambia and across the world, he brought the belief he was raised with, ‘Ubuntu’ to our work. ‘Ubuntu’ means ‘I am because you are’— that we are who we are because of our relationships—we are who we are because of our community. As the psychologist Jean Baker Miller says we are selves-in-relation. And this is the fact we feel most keenly when someone dies: I am because of you. And now, who am I without you?

We are mosaics and when someone dies those mosaic pieces must shift. When someone is alive, they hold those pieces of themselves and through our connection to them we feel the benefits and borrow the strengths of those pieces. And then when someone dies we have the work, the growth, of taking in, of integrating those pieces that we are able to. Taking in those strengths and capacities into our own selves—for us and the community.

That’s why our hearts must break. This is why we must fall apart. This is why grief shatters. We need the brokenness. Without the brokenness we can’t take in the new pieces. Falling apart allow us to absorb the mosaic pieces of the other. It is this grief that allows us to rebuild a world without them, that includes them. This is why time is so necessary to grieving. It takes time to weave these new pieces in. It takes time to remake our mosaics.

How do I live in a world without her? Maybe the short answer is I don’t. Because I bring her into my life every day. I stand in the voting booth and my grandmother is standing next to me. I dig up plants and share them with my neighbors and my mother-in-law is right there with me handing me the spade. I rearrange my schedule to make time for writing and my friends Inger and Janet are raising their glasses and toasting my decision. Our hearts break open and our mosaics, the world’s mosaics, get bigger. First, let yourself grieve. And then, let yourself grow.