Thread by @joshtpm

this is a powerful meditation on grief. my wife is a therapist who specializes in grief. it’s a topic I encountered early in life. when I was 12 my mother was killed in an auto accident. i remember an incident something like what Norm describes. the morning after my mother …

https://twitter.com/normornstein/status/1434546679160741891

2/ died my dad put me on the phone with my uncle (my mother’s brother). he said he could relate because he had also recently lost his mother. (my grandmother had recently died from cancer.) i remember thinking ‘man, I’m sorry but these things are just not the same.’

3/ people say dumb things to people who are grieving. if you are so unfortunate as to suffer a particularly catastrophic loss you learn this very quickly. mainly people don’t know what to say but feel they must say something. people experiencing acute grief are something …

4/ like radioactive. People in the grip of grief are living in a different world. so people want to say something to try to bridge the void, to make some connection. often it’s better to say nothing. or just to listen. as Norm rightly says everyone is entitled to their …

5/ grief and way of experiencing it. we live in a very polarized society and I suspect some of these families went into that meeting with Biden prepped with thinking he’d stolen the election and was evil incarnate. that’s a combustible and difficult interaction. but again …

6/ they’re entitled to exactly their experience, whether it seems fair or not from the outside. that loss is so total and ineffable that the only thing to do is just accept their experience. the press that tries to make these into think pieces or political hits deserve …

7/ no such benefit of the doubt or empathy. they’re really just garbage. this is Biden’s emotive style. it’s very comforting for many people. if it’s not for some we should honor that experience. but it’s not really grist for who’s up who’s down campaign style coverage.

8/ that’s gross. we expect it from Fox. but seeing it in the Times confirms their something really wrong with the take-making as opposed to deeply reported news portion of its national politics coverage.