Several years ago my father died suddenly on my first day of vacation. I had been working over 60 hours a week for a non-profit for three years. I was regularly told I was an incredible employee, often going far above and beyond what was expected of me. I had just been promoted.

A week after my father died I returned to work. I was in shock, I had just barely begun to grieve. I was tired and I managed my pain badly. I began having panic attacks. I desperately needed a break. A month later I asked if there was any way I could have another few days of vacation, as I’d spent my previous vacation planning his sudden memorial and was emotionally and physically exhausted. I was told no. I trudged along, worked ridiculous hours, didn’t have the time or energy to process my grief. Eventually, I was fired. I was told I had become too inattentive, made too many mistakes.

I told myself I was lucky I didn’t yet have a family to feed. I was lucky to qualify for unemployment, which just barely allowed me to eat and live while I continued to grieve and look for work. Not everyone is so lucky.

There are no laws in the United States protecting workers who are grieving. In the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act there is no specific, mandated provision for bereavement leave. And while the FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) requires certain employers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid family and medical leave to eligible employees, this is only unpaid leave, and the only employees eligible are those who work for private employers with 50 or more employees for each working day during each of 20 or more weeks in the current or preceding year.

So if you work for a company of 45 people, you aren’t even covered for unpaid leave. If your company has 1,000 people for almost four months out of the year, you are not covered. If you are a part-time employee, you are not covered. To deal with this gap, a lot of companies have their own policies when it comes to grief. And a lot don’t.

I trudged along, worked ridiculous hours, didn't have the time or energy to process my grief. Eventually, I was fired.
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Although most professionals recognize that grief is trauma that can affect people physically as well as emotionally, employers often don’t take this into account while making policies regarding leave. This is common when it comes to death, as if we are afraid we will speak it into existence, death is an experience that we do not address until it is absolutely necessary. Even then it is in hushed tones, and in the U.S. it is like we are embarrassed by our grief. The irony of course is that it is an experience we are all guaranteed to have. We will all lose those important to us. We will all die.

Just as employees should be expected to take time off to recover from the physical trauma of surgery, employees must be given time to heal from the very real trauma that is grief. But instead, people return to work, like I did, distracted with the pain of losing someone, lacking sleep from planning memorials, lacking money from unexpected travel, in desperate need of rest. It is not ok that we have to be financially well off to have time to grieve. You shouldn’t have to earn time to heal.

We are not all affected equally by this injustice. A complete lack of grieving time in non-salaried positions disproportionately affects Women, PoC, and poor people, and especially those who find themselves at the intersection of all three oppressed groups.

Just as wages are not equal for everyone, the same is true when it comes to benefits. Part time employees rarely get paid leave, and when they do it is short compared to how long it takes for most to heal from the trauma of death, which according to most experts is at least 3 months to a year or more to begin to feel some semblance of normality. About 59% of all wage and salary workers in the United States are paid an hourly rate. This means that almost 60% of our employed citizens aren’t legally required to have unpaid leave right off the bat. And most families can’t afford a period of a provider not getting paid anyway.

The irony of course is that it is an experience we are all guaranteed to have. We will all lose those important to us. We will all die.
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41 million people in the U.S. live in poverty. When you are living check to check, you cannot afford to miss work for more than a funeral, if that. But a funeral does not adequately prepare someone for life without a spouse, or for the depression that can follow a parent dying. Simply put, it isn’t enough. Merely taking the time to grieve can pull families even deeper into poverty.

What happens when you already live below the poverty level and someone close to you, like your partner, dies? Not only are you suddenly missing your partner’s income, you are expected to continue to work to earn your own income like nothing has happened. The average lifespan is about five years longer for women than men in the U.S., and about seven years longer worldwide. Statistically it is likely women will experience the death of a man close to them in their lifetimes. If a woman relies on that man for income, she can now left on her own to fend financially.

Women, especially women of color, are more affected by a lack of bereavement leave, as they are more likely to be single heads of households with children. It is no longer the case that almost all houses are relying on a man’s income. In 2015, 42% of all households with children under 18 had a woman earning most or all of the household income. More than 80% of Black mothers bring in 40% or more of their families’ income. And yet there are almost double the number of women in the United States working part time as men. This means that women are disproportionately affected not only by less income but also by a lack of benefits, including bereavement leave.

Oppression happens in a number of ways. Not giving people time to heal from trauma means they must fight for a way forward through other oppressive systems with the extra burden of being hurt. Black people are 13% of the U.S. population, but 23% of those officially in poverty and 39% of the homeless.

Not only is there a clear wage gap based on race, it has been found that this gap follows employees from position to position. Because a WoC made less at her last three positions, she will make less at her current position. Pairing this with the likelihood she does not have benefits including bereavement leave, and you have systemic oppression that can affect a family, and generations to come.

It benefits everyone to have bereavement leave. When employees are fully rested and supported, productivity goes up. Employees are less likely to quit their jobs when given adequate vacations and sick time. This is true for most benefits. Additionally, it costs money to hire a new employee. Nurturing and adding to your current employee’s skillset with new training is much less expensive than utilizing your HR department to conduct interviews, hire someone new, and train that new employee all the while covering an empty position. Allowing employees time they deserve to heal ultimately costs less.

Not giving people time to heal from trauma means they must fight for a way forward through other oppressive systems with the extra burden of being hurt.
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Bereavement leave can be done well. In Sweden, every employee can have up to ten days of paid bereavement leave a year. In Canada, “When a member of an employee’s immediate family dies, the employee is entitled to leave on any normal working day that falls within the three-day period immediately following the day the death occurred.” As long as the employee has been continuously employed for three months, they are also eligible to be paid for the days they are out, up to three days.

Everyone dies. Everyone experiences the death of loved ones at some point in their lives. Our fear is doing us a disservice. We are underprepared for the inevitable. We must have systems in place to allow for necessary healing. We must have policies that make leave available for workers who are mourning, because it affects us all. A lack of bereavement leave is oppression and it must be addressed.

My partner and I both grew up with music. We both heard our daddies sing from birth, and sang with our families before we could read. When we think about having a child, we often wonder what their voice will sound like. We wonder if they’ll hear jazz and beg to play the piano before their feet can reach the pedals, like I did, or sing at Carnegie Hall like their father. We hope that they will be happy, honest, and kind; that they will find and express their joy proudly; that they will be ready when they meet those who might wish to silence them.

My friends who are parents often tell me there is no way of knowing what parenthood is like until you experience it. My partner and I are in our thirties, and we are deciding whether to bring another human into our family. We both love other people’s children. We both feel we could offer a child a loving home. If we do have a child, we will do our best to help them understand the importance of respecting and truly hearing others.

What I struggle with most is not what I don’t know, but what I do. My child, if I have one, will be Black in the United States. As a white person with a Black partner, I already know what it is to fear my husband will meet a police officer who finds him “threatening.” But I do not know, and can never know, what it is like to be Black. I worry I will not be able to teach my child all they need to know in a nation and a society in which I have privileges they will never have. And it terrifies both me and my partner to know that any child we have is sure to face racism in this country.

I’m not alone. Writer Shannon Barber says, “Racism is a large part of why I’ve decided not to have children in the U.S.” When I ask if she would be more likely to consider parenthood living in another country, Shannon answers, “There aren’t enough places where me or my Black children would be safe.”

Writer and activist Feminista Jones also talked with me about whether racism factored into her decision to have a child. “For the longest [time], I didn’t want children,” she says. “There were a lot of family issues, but I was concerned about bringing another Black child into this world. With everything that our people experience, I wondered if it would be fair to sentence another human being to the inevitable.” Jones does have a son now; he has just started fifth grade.

I was concerned about bringing another Black child into this world.
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My partner and I know that any child of ours would face an education system that unfairly punishes and suspends students who look like them. They would live in a city in which only about six in 10 students graduate from high school — and this number is even lower for Black students. In the United States, Black children are three times more likely to be the victims of robbery and five times more likely to be victims of homicide than white children. Black adults are twice as likely as white peers to experience unemployment.

Our child would have advantages and opportunities many children do not — they would have a parent who taught art, one who makes puzzles, two parents with advanced degrees who were once educators. They would grow up in a house full of books, with (hopefully) three loving and supportive grandparents in their lives. But my partner and I must also face the fact that our future child could also be murdered by those tasked to protect and serve them. Who will protect our child from the “protectors”? Can we truly cope with a lifetime of fear, wondering if our child would become one of far too many whose lives are lost at the hands of police?

Feminista Jones feels prepared to discuss racism with her son. “It was the current movement against police brutality that prompted me to begin the age-appropriate discussions,” she tells me. “When Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who looked remarkably like my own son, was killed, I became fearful for my child’s life. It was imperative that I begin to discuss racism with him. My son is quite intelligent and rather intuitive, but also curious. He asks important questions and I do my best to answer them. I think he has a basic but solid understanding of how racism affects Black people, but the focus has been on uplifting our people and teaching him the importance of living himself and respecting Black people.”

Writer Rhea St. Julien, a white parent of a 6-year-old Black daughter, tells me, “We started early, talking about race…When our daughter was two, and was learning parts of the body and differences between people, we pointed out our varying skin tones and hair textures, and gave her language for how to describe those things respectfully and truthfully.”

‘When Tamir Rice was killed, I became fearful for my child’s life.’
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Rhea says she never once considered not having a child because of anti-Black racism they would face. “I knew I’d have to equip my child with special resilience skills, but I felt strongly that this was something my husband and I could do, with our strong support system of family and friends,” she says. Rhea and her family began the Stay Woke Parents Collective in her city to create opportunities for kids to participate in actions to fight racism and promote Black lives, from sign-making and story time to marches and rallies.

To know your child will face racism and the threat of state violence is one more injustice on top of so many others that Black parents and parents of Black children must combat. People should be free to make parenting decisions — including the choice of whether or not to have children — and dream of their families’ futures without this kind of fear.

If my partner and I do decide to have a child, we will do our best to prepare, filling up on cautious hope and endeavoring to listen and learn. We will work our hardest to give our child more than we had. We will challenge systems and individuals and language that oppresses others. We will be open about and true to who we are and what we support, and make our voices heard.

To our future, maybe child: I will teach you to play the piano. Your father can teach you to play the guitar. Our friends and family will sing with you, show you how to lift a tuba, and proudly watch if you ever want to take over a stage. We will help you find chances that many may not want you to have, and we will struggle to be honest about the world we live in — a world that will sometimes devastate us with the way it treats you. Know that we will fight for you and do our best to protect you. As your parents, that is what we must do.

Sometimes I fear that I will be mourning forever, that there is nothing ahead but more grief. That no matter what actions I take, each day will begin with remembering all the people I have lost and all the love I am missing. I am afraid I will spend most of my hours ignoring the living, breathing love around me because I miss what I used to have.

The word “miss” is not right. It feels so much like death steals away the people we love. It feels like we are owed more time. It feels like the universe is cruel, and that we deserve better.

Grief made me realize how entitled we feel to life.

Death comes laced with injustice. This is especially true when we lose our loved ones to unnatural causes; we lose our families to poverty, to war, our children are killed by those meant to protect them — and it isn’t fair. Even when death is “natural” it still steals your loved one suddenly, which isn’t right, either. It still feels unjust to those left alive.

We all fight death differently, but it mirrors the way we fight other injustices. Sometimes we passively resist death, silently strong, holding ground as long as possible like those who sat in diners, not so long ago, refusing to move, boldly proclaiming their humanity.

Often, we fight together, marching against death but also for change, like so many of us who have witnessed the chanting of thousands making a difference in public policy. It is rare that we accept death on its face. It is rare that we let our loved ones go without a fight, without an effort toward what would be more just.

The morning my father died, I was the one to affirm that it was time to turn off the machines keeping the shell of my father warm, the one that was rhythmically pushing air into his lungs and blood through his veins. This was not the moment that hurt the most. It was the moment just before, when we were sure he was gone.

Death is not always immediate. It often creeps in the corner, in plain sight for the worst 24 hours/two months/three years of your life, waiting to snatch the person you love. For me, it was 24 hours of waiting for death to come. I was 28, my brother was 19, and the person who had, at one point, been a stay-at-home dad, who had argued with every authority he’d ever met, who attended 40 years of protests, always on the side of what was fair and just, who had carried me on his shoulders so proudly, who pushed our swings, who made our sides hurt with his hilarious sarcasm was suddenly gone.

Once his brain no longer functioned, we did exactly what he wanted, we turned off the shell in which it once lived. After the endless five-minute drive home from the hospital, the rest of my family fell asleep. When the hospital called, I was awake and answered after one ring.

“I’m calling for the family of Arnold Millard.”

“Arnie.” I corrected her. As if he was still alive to care. A tear rolled down my cheek.

“Yes. I know this is a hard time, but. . .”

Organs need to be donated right away. You don’t have much time to consider if you want to save a life, provide sight, donate much-needed skin to burn victims — or if it is more important to keep your family member’s body intact for burial. My father always made it clear that he felt only one of these decisions was just, and therefore what he wanted done with his body.

“Oh,” I said to the woman calling from the hospital, relieved to know the answer. I’d just spent 24 hours not knowing the answer to anything. “Yes, please, he was an organ donor, of course, please use anything you can!”

It turns out you can’t do it that way. You have to go over every possible piece of your loved one’s body and give permission.

“Do we have permission to donate his kidneys?”

“Yes.”

I remembered my family and a friend’s family marching in Washington, D.C. for the 2004 March for Women’s Lives. My dad was so proud that we were all together.

“Do we have permission to use his skin for grafting?”

“Yes.”

I thought of being a young thing, holding my father’s hand, his palm so much larger than my own, him lifting me into the sky and onto his shoulders so I could see the thousands around us, all marching against war.

“Eyes?”

“Of course.”

I realized then that he would never see all I had left to accomplish, all the truths of my own I had to learn. He would never see me share my knowledge with others through my writing. He had been so proud to see my name in print on playbills, but he would never see me or my name again.

“His heart?”

“Um,” I could barely breathe. “Um, he died of a heart attack. He has — he had a metal valve, it was supposed to, I mean it did. . . ”

As a child, for far too long I thought that boys and girls had different heart sounds. Because my father was born with a damaged heart valve, he lived with a pig’s valve until I was a toddler, and after that he had an upgrade to a metal valve and his heart ticked. As my mother and I both have quietly beating hearts, I figured it was because we were women, and men had ticking hearts, like clocks, like metronomes. My father was a musician, playing bass and guitar in several jazz and Klezmer bands. It made sense.

My brother was born when I was nine. Eager to be a big sister, I changed diapers, took great pride in showing him off. One day I hugged him close and realized something alarming.

“I think something’s wrong,” I told my mother.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, his heart, it doesn’t tick,” and the moment it was out of my mouth I saw my mom’s smile. My cheeks turned pink with embarrassed realization.

“Yes, I understand,” said the woman on the phone. “Could it be donated to science if it is found to be viable?”

My father was, among many other things, a scientist. He had degrees in business and chemical engineering and took great pride in his ability to be logical. My dad knew that in the United States, an average of 79 people receive organ transplants each day. He knew that 22 other people die each day because of a lack of donated organs. He was aware that every ten minutes someone new is added to the list of people who need organs.

He knew that if he had a different heart defect, he would be on a list too.

My dad was the one who told me there were people who were able to circumvent being on an organ donation list due to financial privilege. “A list,” I remember him saying, “There is a list of people who right now, at this moment, could fill a stadium. A list of people who need lungs to breathe, eyes to see, a heart to live — and we regularly bury all of these useful items in disgustingly expensive wooden boxes.”

My father had always made it clear he didn’t want any money spent on disposing of his corpse — he considered it silly. While attempting to fulfill his wishes, it still cost thousands of dollars get his ashes in a nondescript box to sprinkle in the Pennsylvania water where he’d spent each spring feeding ducks. We were lucky we had the means to do this.

While my father taught me many important lessons with words, there is one he taught me by showing, not telling. An atheist, he rejected organized religion, but we still went to temple and celebrated Jewish holidays. Though he may not have realized it, he was teaching me the importance of tradition, of ritual to promote community, the value of preserving the good parts of culture. I still hold this lesson dear.

But he also taught me to weigh the importance of tradition with knowledge of science.

So, maybe your value system requires you to bury your dead as “whole.” But when someone who is not an organ donor is embalmed, their organs are thrown out. Literally, thrown in the trash. If they are not thrown out, organs are punctured and filled with embalming fluid. No matter what, your loved one is not being buried “whole.”

Even if you choose to bypass embalming, I must ask, does your belief system, which may have been invented before organs could be reused, which may have had its peak when we died at the average age of 40, does that system really value dead bodies over live ones? Do you?

To those who fear that a doctor who normally works hard to save lives would see your organ donation sticker and suddenly value another patient over you and let you die, there is no basis for this belief. This is a myth and a powerful one; it is keeping people from life-saving organs. Stop giving it power by repeating it.

The grieving will never end. However, my ability to live with it becomes easier and easier. As I learned to think of my father in past tense, it was helpful to know I did exactly what he wanted; it was easier because it was right. He would tell you it was just. I gave my father’s heart away and I hope my family chooses to honor me by making the same just choice.