On Grief & Control
by Tara Ebrahimi, Director of Communications
On March 25, a week after I discovered I was pregnant, I found out that Paul had died. I had never been pregnant, and I had never lost someone I was close to. I was not prepared for the emotions that came with either.
Paul and I had gone to graduate school at the University of Washington together. When I was a TA, he had been my assistant, and when we walked around campus, all of our female students would bat their eyelashes and coo “Hiiiii, Mr. Vega,” completely ignoring me. We lived a block from each other in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle and Sundays we watched bad movies on his couch, like Mad Max and Army of the Dead, nursing hangovers with greasy food and Pedialyte.
Paul was a formidable writer. He was loyal. A great conversationalist. An avid KU fan. A fisherman who spent his summers in Alaska. A devoted son. An alcoholic. He was my friend for more than 10 years. Without him, I wouldn’t have made it through grad school--two of the most difficult years of my life where I struggled with a depression that I almost succumbed to many times. He kept me afloat, and when I received word that he had died, all I could think to myself was, “You let him drown.”
Maybe it’s because I’m on the verge of parenthood myself, or maybe it’s because I talked to Paul’s dad on the phone a handful of times when Paul was in a dark place, but I’ve thought about Paul’s parents a lot since his death. I don’t presume to know what it’s like--yet--to bring a human being into the world, raise them, protect them, care for them, love them, but I can say that I am truly terrified. Because if what I feel right now toward this lifeform growing inside me is even a thousandth of what I will feel when she is born, then I am fucked.
I lay in bed at night running through all of the scary scenarios that I have no control over: what if she gets sick, what if she inherits my depressiveness, what if she battles substance use, what if she gets hurt, what if, what if, what if? What if I let her drown? Like I did with Paul. I know this is not rational thinking. I know, intellectually, that I had no control over Paul’s life--or death. That I will eventually have no control over her life.
I come back to my daily work, helping organizations that are helping those who are marginalized, people who have struggled against deeply rooted inequities. In the beginning, when I first came to the nonprofit world, I cried regularly. I cried when I read statistics about children in poverty. I cried when I had to research incarceration rates in communities of color. I cried when I wrote about the decimation of intergenerational wealth for Black people. I pictured the people behind the numbers--the little boy who didn’t have enough to eat or the father of three who was in prison for 20 years for marijuana possession or the South Side family who worked and worked only to face eviction. There was so little I could do to help, to stop it, to make a dent or impact.
But I kept doing the work. As so many of us do. Because even the smallest dent is still a dent. And even though I had no control over the outcomes, I would rather face the world, do my best, and care fiercely than walk away because it was simpler.
I think about Paul every day. I think about my unborn child every minute. I cared fiercely for Paul and I care fiercely for her. I did my best for Paul, and I will do my best for her. It’s easy when you can control things; it’s an act of love when you can’t, but you keep going nonetheless.
