The way forward
On grief and love and forgiveness
Welcome to Not a Doctor, the only newsletter about health and science that is still mourning, but trying to find a way forward.
I’m Melody Schreiber, a journalist and the editor of What We Didn’t Expect.I’m not a doctor, or a scientist, or really an expert of any kind. I just like to ask questions and try to find the answers to them.
🌡 🌡 🌡
This week, my husband and I learned of another loss: one of his friends since childhood is no longer with us.
For me, the grief is still the same inexhaustible pit, a yawning black hole; the internal scream that I try to tune out all day long has another name to echo. I can’t help but wonder how many others will join them in the coming months.
I murmur “just stay alive” like a mantra; I implore friends to please, stay safe, if not for yourself then for me — even though I know it doesn’t work that way. I wonder who I should call to check on, because you cannot know who will be next and you wish in vain that a simple phone call might alter the course of a life, even for a little while, if you could just figure out who needs to hear it.
In all of this, it might sound strange that I published a story about Rwanda’s genocide yesterday. Yes, I clearly know how to have a good time. But this story is deeply meaningful to me, and honestly I can think of no better time to share it with the world.
How a nation recovers from unimaginable pain and loss, with hundreds of thousands dead within only a few months, amid deep partisan divides and widespread social and racial inequality — it’s becoming an ever-more pertinent question.
And more than just how a country moves on — how do people keep going when they have lost so much?
The man I met in Rwanda, Innocent, is a 70-year-old survivor of the genocide. His wife and seven children were murdered. And now, he spends his days searching for bodies still hidden after the violence, 26 years later.
But within the pain, there is great hope. How do you recover after losing so much? How do you rebuild any kind of a life?
“All of what they did, all of the killing — they didn't get anything from it,” Innocent said. “For my heart to be cleansed, the only way is forgiveness.”
I couldn’t grasp it, and I’m still not sure I can. Innocent exuded calm and peace. He’d had everything ripped away from him. How was he even still here?
Innocent told me that God saved him so he could lay the others to rest. It’s his purpose. “For me, it's the only way — it's the only thing I can do, is to forgive.”
“To be able to go past that is to approach God,” he said.
There have been moments, in the past few months, where I need to forgive; I have felt rage against those who have, indirectly or purposefully, caused someone else’s death. I have been perhaps angriest at myself for not doing more, for not trying harder, for not preventing the losses that have been so close.
But the only way forward is forgiveness. The only way to rebuild is to love. You may seem to lose everything — but you never lose what is nestled in your heart.
If Innocent can keep going after losing everyone who ever mattered to him — if he can take all that love in his heart and transform it and send it outward, into the lives of people he’s never even met, in these radical acts of love he does every day — what’s holding us back?
🌡 🌡 🌡
I hope you are able to stay safe, my friends, and I hope you know how loved you are.
As always, please leave a comment or email me with questions and feedback at melodyaschreiber@gmail.com. If you think of someone who needs to hear this today, please forward it to them — or better yet, surprise them with a phone call.