Two tasks loom large when you lose someone beloved and a deep part of your life. One is grieving the loss of the person — what was and what will never be again — and second, finding a direction in your life without that person.

Keep what you can.

Let go of what you can’t.

Enjoy what you have.

The phrases are my north star for living so much so that I included them as the subtitle of my book, “Women, we’re only old once.” The inspiration for them came out of my early understanding of impermanence or the inevitability of change.

And so, I sort through the remains of my day in what feels like a struggle to find a life again.

First — and I will describe it as more intuitive than thoughtful — I locked into the security and predictable that I knew: friends and family. I expected that some would share my grief given their own loss and some would console me in my grief just because they cared and knew I was deeply hurting.

I was shocked when one family contingent did neither. There is a complicated history there, much of which is charged by philosophical and political differences, but it surprisingly had deeper roots than I knew existed.

The great political divide hit home when it offered no consolation and instead dissolved the memory of a long life in the acid of arrogance.

At first, I did not understand the lack of consolation. The lack was incomprehensible in my values around living and my system of expressing those values especially in times of great need.

I asked and learned the divide was so great and the chasm so deep there was no allowance for empathy in even the most human of circumstances. Embedded in the stance was anger, not just at me, but anyone who had an opinion or voted like me or my husband.

I was stunned my vote would make so profound a difference in a relationship.

I realized my four years of caregiving had put me out of touch with the personal impact of the great divide on even the closest of relationships.

I know I am not the first person to have the great divide slice into a close relationship.

Perhaps, if I had been on it sooner or at a less vulnerable time, I would not have felt so surprised, so rejected.

Explains everything and nothing

I recall that anger became part of our political discourse when Donald Trump was elected in 2016. Many opined that the anger had always been with us and Trump tapped into it. He was adept at speaking the language of the anger when he raged on about elites, immigrant crime and “American carnage.”

Most meaningful is that Trump gave permission to be “politically incorrect” … to swear, to be rude, to call people names.

At the time, I wanted to understand the depth and the reason. I read about caste systems and hierarchies. I read about economic losses when businesses relocated outside of the United States.

Trump never spoke of empathy, perhaps not understanding what it meant, although, Trump seemed to ask for empathy when he called himself a victim.

Trump gave permission not to care. Instead, he trumpeted revenge.

Did he manage to unleash something festering in the background or provide the fertilizer for it to grow and spread?

Has failure to empathize grown so much as to become embedded in our culture? That we feel it only for those that agree with us?

Does it mean we no longer believe in the common good or “a rising tide raises all boats”?

I think not.

‘Keep what you can’

My recent experience of support and caring far outweighs the experience of one uncaring individual, although I had to work to “let go of what I can’t have.”

I have far more people caring because they have felt the pain of enormous loss themselves.

I believe in the end we will resist becoming part of a negative view that pits us against each other and causes us to reject any sense of duty to the common good.

Trump clearly speaks to something that longed for expression I do not believe that sentiment represents the views or environment that most Americans prefer. He promises to tear down the “deep state.” Translation: government institutions that serve us now.

Most of us want a stable government that is not going to come apart because someone wants to remove all the institutional memory and expertise that gets the latest COVID vaccine out the door, recalls contaminated products, mobilizes defenses when Russia sails around Alaska, and provides process that can stop building jails next to schools.

We want innovation in and outside of government, but not built on barren fields that have no history.

Most of us want government to work because we have enough in our lives that requires our daily attention.

Besides, we do not want to be in a bad mood every day or around others who are. We want to enjoy what we have.

Most people do not want to live in a war zone even though it is just a war of words zone.

As the wise Dalai Lama said, “Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, manifestation of human compassion.”

Bertha Cooper, an award-winning featured columnist with the Sequim Gazette, spent her career years in health care administration, program development and consultation and is the author of the award-winning “Women, We’re Only Old Once.” Cooper and her husband have lived in Sequim more than 25 years. Reach her at columnists@sequimgazette.com.