Word: mourning
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...government may try to hide them, there are ways to measure the costs of war, and last week people could take their pick. You could see, for the first time, the coffins of dead soldiers, wrapped tight like a gift in the flag for which they fought. You could mourn the one whose name was familiar, the football star who took a million-dollar pay cut to defend his country after 9/11. You could listen, for the first time, to the Pentagon leaders admitting that they would need both more troops and more money to get the job done...
...absence when their grades dip. There is nothing really wrong with this. An affection for the go-getter is what makes Harvard so quintessentially American, and what makes it so Harvard. But if there is not room at Harvard for impracticality, then there is at least room to mourn it. And so spring will find me on Garden Street, heading for the Quad’s doomed, lovely library...
What all these scarred characters are looking for, in effect, is a way to mourn their dead properly, as in the rambunctious, storytelling wakes of home. The dew breaker himself is drawn to the ancient Egyptians because "they know how to grieve." The only redeeming thing about committing terrible acts, he seems to know, is that it impels one to try to lead the rest of one's life more cleanly. Danticat's gift is to combine both sympathy and clarity in a moral tangle that becomes as tight as a Haitian community. She doesn't try to bring everything...
...when real-life pain—intrudes into a community or our individual lives, it’s tough to react without seeming voyeuristic or disingenuous. And when, as in my case, tragedy strikes someone who was once close but is no longer, who has the right to mourn...
...parents. I heard about her ailments—and her slow progress towards some sort of recovery—secondhand. While I can’t imagine my grief is as acute as those of her closer friends and her family, I feel like I now have to mourn twice...