Mourning someone I never met

Well, shit.

I went to my friend’s 40th on the weekend. She lives on a hill away from the city so I spent a blissful almost-24 hours without internet. As the trees thinned out and I neared the busier roads my phone began to beep and vibrate as email upon DM upon text message landed on each other with an urgent thump.

But nothing was urgent.

Just another email from another PR company about a budget meal kit and another from someone admonishing me for not writing about Iran, as if the world needs my thoughts on it, and another informing me of Russia’s dirty bombs, and another asking for help with a Givealittle to save a child from Pharmac’s cruel lottery, and another asking if I want to review a book on menopause, and another asking me if I’ve seen this anti-vaxxer who is also an anti-semite.

And braided between them was a message saying “You know the woman with the emu? The emu has bird flu!” followed by “don’t worry I think she’s racist. It’s the other lady with the emu who is cool and her emu doesn’t have bird flu”. Another message saying, “Do you have any advice on how to get a lawyer? My husband has left me for another woman and I can’t even afford rent this week without him”. Another message saying, “Can you share this about the family court? Mothers have too much power”, followed by another message from someone else saying, “Can you share this about the family court? We need help to show how mothers are being abused by the system”, followed by another one asking if I will stand up to an influencer who shared a photo of her baby naked and do I know how many paedophiles are out there? Do I know?!

“You have a platform so to not say anything would be very wrong”.

“Will you say something about adidas?”

And all I can think is: Which is the good emu lady?

Which emu content can I consume?

Today, I saw Leslie Jordan had died. I saw the news when I returned from a walk with the kids. One of my kids had said over and over, “Why did HE get a skateboard and I didn’t get anything! I get nothing!” And I had said: “You can have a skateboard or any other outside activity. But I’m not buying you more Robux because that’s an inside activity and summer is coming”.

And he had looked at me and said with all of the confidence in the world: “Roblux is an outside activity if you take your iPad outside!!!”.

I had walked into the house and looked at my phone and there it was.

‘Beloved’ comedian Leslie Jordan dead at 67.

And all I could think was, no. Because I saw his video yesterday.

I went to look for it to make sure I was right and there it was - just one day ago. How is that possible?

And why am I crying for someone I haven’t met?

And it’s not fair.

Like everyone else I started watching Leslie’s videos during the pandemic. They were so wholesome. So sweet. Such a break from the world.

Hey there fellow hunker-downers.

Just hearing that was enough some days to get me through.

I needed anything to get me through those endless days when my boss rang me at all hours and demanded so much more than my part-time role required, when my kids needed me every second of every day, when everything felt like it was falling apart and I still had messages demanding a hot take on Madonna saying Covid 19 is a great equaliser while in a bath of milk. All while people died and tried not to die.

I kept watching Leslie. And like everyone else, I delighted in his success - it felt so good to see someone deserving land on their feet. His joy was as contagious as the fucking virus we were trying to survive. The virus you could not, could never, ignore.

You didn’t have to think. He was self-compassion in a 30 second video, a chance for you to put your mind at ease. He demanded nothing from anyone. He was simply a friend virtually. Look at Leslie so excited to be at a Hollywood party - just like you would be. Look at Leslie in his blue tuxedo. Look at Leslie twirling.

When his mother Miss Peggy Anne died, I felt like I was celebrating her life with him. Is this how to grieve? With such pure gratitude for life?

His Leslie-isms ran loops in my mind. “Well, every garbage can has its lid” and “Well goodness gracious y’all” and “To each as every own” and “well shit, y’all”. I’d say these things to myself, just to trick myself into thinking everything was OK. And wasn’t everything OK? Compared to everyone else’s horrors?

As people celebrated the end of a pandemic that was still in full force for our whānau, Leslie and his little stories were a balm.

In an endless cycle of Kim Kardashian telling us to get off our asses and work and Will Smith Slap reactions and Uncut Jahms and Morbin’ Time and new Nazis being revealed every other day…There was Leslie showing up every other day. There he was shining a little bit of light for us - the over-caffeinated, underpaid, eternally-online, survivors of the gig economy. A tiny break from our inability to buy a house or petrol. From soggy cardboard straws trying to stop flash floods. From school shootings and fascist leaders. His corner of the internet was somewhere to place our hope that things aren’t quite as awful as they seem.

That all was not lost.

Where do you put your grief for someone you didn’t know? Where do you put your grief for 2,065 New Zealanders dead from Covid 19 in such a short time?

Where do you put the pain of a message from a stranger that says “I lost my baby when I had Covid 19 and my baby isn’t counted in the death toll”.

If you hold it, hold it all as much as you can, to share the burden - you need a soft landing. You can’t take that to your partner, your tamariki. You take it, and hold it, and you pack it up with as much softness as you can find from the strange little places on internet where there’s just that light…

Otherwise it’s too big too hold. So you look at Leslie Jordan in a tank top that says “STOP BEING NOT MY BIRTHDAY”.

You look at an emu.

You watch a horse get a new shoe.

You watch a capybara jump.

You watch a woman rescue a kitten and bathe it as it scratches and bites. You watch the filthy water circle the drain.

And then in the next video the kitten is fluffy and new. And it tickles a ball of yarn.

And you rest for a moment. A micro-pause from this life where we’re holding so much.

A little light in a dark timeline.

A break before the world knocks virtually at your door once again.

Leslie Allen Jordan reporting for duty.

He knew better than anyone the things we all have to hold. And he wanted to help.

He did.

He did help so much.

Thank you Leslie 💜