Walking The Talk
A personal note on shock, grief, and showing up as best I can
Dear friends
I write little about myself here on Substack, and that’s intentional. I want the focus to be on you, my readers — unless something from my own experience might resonate, help, or explain. This is one of those occasions.
I live in a small village in a river valley, at the foot of gently undulating hills. We’re surrounded by old farms, woodlands and rolling fields. Our community is tight-knit and, for the most part, as warm and welcoming as the surrounding countryside is beautiful. When the pandemic struck, the local Boy Scouts organised volunteers to shop for our elderly and unwell neighbours during the twelve-week lockdown — a vital lifeline when the nearest large store is thirteen miles away. The whole village stepped up. That old-fashioned spirit of looking out for one another runs deep here.
A fortnight ago, something happened here that none of us were prepared for.
On the day of the No Kings rallies, just as the east coast of America was waking up, one of our own — John — had just finished a round of golf. John had been the local electrician, but at 81 was now enjoying retirement. He was instantly recognisable by his bushy white beard and eyebrows, his wide smile, sharp wit and plain-spoken words. Tall, strong, and full of life, his only health complaint was a knee injury, for which he used a small buggy to get around our local 9-hole golf course.
That Saturday, when he returned home from his morning round, he parked his small van, opened the back doors, and started unloading the buggy. Moments later, his wife Jacky heard a noise that didn’t sound right — the sound of the metal ramp clattering to the ground, as we later learned. She went outside and found the van had rolled back several metres, with John underneath.
Jacky called emergency services, and an ambulance arrived quickly. She then called their son, Ian, who lived just over a mile away. In the short time it took him to drive there, three police cars, an air ambulance and a fire engine had also arrived, closing the road. Ian had to park up and walk the rest of the way. As he walked up the road, a stream of blood trickled down.
Ian arrived to find his father still trapped under the van, still conscious, while the emergency services tried to free him. It took them forty minutes. That’s when Ian called me — his partner, and John’s daughter-in-law.
John was blue-lighted to our regional hospital — the same one Ian had been airlifted to seven months earlier, after a sheep ran out in front of his motorbike and he ended up in critical care with a broken pelvis. The same hospital I’d been admitted to with a severe mast cell flare two days before John’s accident — and had discharged myself from to finish writing my promised series of protest pieces.
On Saturday night, as we all breathed a sigh of relief that there had been no trouble at the No Kings rallies, John was in intensive care, sedated and on a ventilator. He was the most critical patient in the 862 bed hospital. The doctors asked for permission to shave off his iconic bushy white beard so they could intubate and treat him properly. It was the first time Ian had seen his father without it.
Ian’s sister Jane arrived the following morning, and the family visited John in hospital, although he was unconscious throughout. I wrote my post-protest grounding post, and excused myself from you all for a week, knowing that the next days would be challenging.
It was Monday — two days after the accident — before we learned the extent of John’s injuries. His cheekbones were broken and his nose had several fractures. He had multiple broken ribs — some in more than one place — a cracked sternum, and his lungs and heart had been “bruised” and “insulted”. When I first heard that description, it conjured up an almost comic image, as if the organs had been offended rather than damaged. In reality, of course, it’s clinical language meant to convey injury, but to me it sounded euphemistic and vague. It didn’t really convey the seriousness of what had happened. And there seemed to be a bright glimmer of hope: John’s chest injuries might be operable. The doctors were waiting to hear from “the rib guys”, who would determine whether the fractures could be pinned and repaired.
On Tuesday, there was a breakthrough. As Jacky and Ian approached the bed, Jacky thought that not only were John’s eyes open, but that he was looking around him. She whispered, “I think he’s awake, Ian!” She leaned in to John and asked, “Can you see me?” John nodded, and Jacky broke down in tears. When Ian held his father’s hand, John — a lifelong Trekkie — started to move his fingers apart. Ian said, “I think he’s trying to do the Vulcan greeting, Mum!” Jacky didn’t believe it, but Jane asked outright: “Did you just tell Ian to live long and prosper, Dad?” John nodded again. These felt like small, extraordinary signs. And then we learned the operation was feasible, and with John’s vitals stable, the surgeons planned to proceed soon.
Wednesday brought more hopeful news: John had continued to improve, and the surgeons had decided to operate. At the same time, I travelled to Ireland to accompany my mum to her cancer clinic the following day — the reason I’d arranged to take a brief break from these pages. Her metastatic breast cancer had recently shown a lesion in her liver, and she was going to receive the second round of her new treatment. As I arrived, Ian rang to tell me that John’s operation had been a success, and the doctors expected to wean him off the ventilator within forty-eight hours. The news lifted us all.
On Thursday, there was more encouraging news about Mum’s response to therapy — her breast cancer was receding, and the new regimen offered the chance to control the liver involvement. Her oncologist was delighted. For a brief, miraculous moment, it seemed we were witnessing two recoveries: my mother’s cancer responding to treatment and John emerging from his life-threatening ordeal.
The following day, I returned to Scotland, exhausted but uplifted. Then on Saturday, a week after the accident, John was finally taken off the ventilator. Though he was in considerable pain, the medical team believed that once his discomfort was managed, his recovery would continue. But on Sunday evening, as Jacky, Jane and Ian prepared to leave John’s bedside, the doctors informed them that John’s pain was because he wasn’t breathing as he should. Within an hour — with his wife and children by his side — John passed away peacefully.
John’s family is handling his passing with grace and with humour — however odd that might sound as I write it. But I think the rest of us, the wider community, are still in shock. In the week following the accident we clung to the hope that if the rib-pinning succeeded, John would return to us. He had always seemed indomitable — larger than life, in both stature and spirit. For many of us, his loss is incomprehensible. And while we wait for a post-mortem, and then for his body to be released, there’s no sense of movement, let alone of closure.
I’m someone who feels the emotions of others deeply, and this has been no exception. Over the years, I’ve learned how to work with that sensitivity — both spiritually and energetically — to help others move through their own pain and confusion. These past days, I’ve been holding space as a kind of ‘grounding point’ for the community’s shock and grief, to allow it to move through rather than settle. Some days I manage that well. On others — like today — it sits really heavy, and I feel it right down to my bones.
All of this has narrowed my focus, shifting the balance of my attention, and pulling it towards what’s right in front of me. I know that will settle soon, but for now I’m working within a smaller horizon — keeping my energy present where I’m most needed, with less capacity for anything beyond that. Because what I write here depends on clear, grounded, open thinking, I wanted to be honest with you about that.
In my writing, I’ve often said that care within our communities is itself a form of resistance to authoritarianism — that it strengthens the fabric that keeps us human when the wider systems around us are fraying. Since I started writing here in March, most of my time and energy have gone into tending this online community, helping people stay steady in a time of deep political stress. Right now, that same work is needed here, where I live. It isn’t a step back so much as a step in — the same practice of care and grounding, just carried out close to home for a short while.
Your time and attention are precious, and I never take either for granted. When I make a commitment to you, it matters to me that I honour it. Over this past couple of weeks, I haven’t managed to post as I promised, and I wanted you to understand why. Many of you not only read my newsletters but write to me directly — thoughtful, generous messages that I’ve always tried to read and respond to, even if not as quickly as I’d like. If you’ve written recently and haven’t had a reply, please know that it isn’t due to indifference. I simply haven’t had the capacity.
For now, I need to ask for a little more of your patience and grace. My usual rhythm here is two or three posts a week — two focused on political stress and burnout, and a Sunday piece on hope, drawn from my years living under authoritarian rule in Zimbabwe. Just for the moment, I can’t sustain that pace. I need some space to be with the shock and grief of the past few weeks, and to let them move through me without the pressure of deadlines I’ve set for myself.
What I can manage — and what I know I can give my full attention to — is one post a week on political stress and burnout for the next two to three weeks. I already have a few written and waiting, and I’ll begin sharing those this coming week. Once things have settled a little, I’ll return to the rhythm we’re all used to.
The road has a way of turning without warning — up into mist, down into hollows, through patches where the ground gives a little underfoot. And still we walk. Because the act of walking — of staying with it — is what keeps us connected to the ground beneath us, and to one another.
Thank you for your understanding and for standing with me during this difficult time. Your kindness means more than I can express.
With deep gratitude
— Lori
© Lori Corbet Mann, 2025
Lori, thank you for sharing your story. I’ve noticed that crises never seem to take a number and wait their turn, but rather descend on us all at once. Grief is a hard road, and often there doesn’t seem to be anything under our feet at all as we move forward. There is a road, of course, and it’s firm and real … and often it’s our community that keeps our feet firmly on it.
My mother died unexpectedly, and my father’s cancer took him 6 months later. Within the next 2 years, we lost my in-laws, two aunts, and an uncle. Our own community is less tight than it used to be, and my community of friends is scattered across three continents, but they gave so much of themselves and they shared our grief in a way that made it slightly less heavy.
I’ll never forget the old classmate, who had had many losses of his own, who reached out to me on one of the worst days and, for lack of a better phrase, held grief with me for an evening. This is another role that a strong community can play as we feel our way forward.
Thank you for introducing John to us. He sounds like a lovely man, and I’m holding everyone who cared for him in the Light today.
Jennie,
Thousand Islands, Ontario
I can’t remember how I came to this particular ‘Stack, (Is that what we call these?) but your observation “care within our communities is itself a form of resistance to authoritarianism — that it strengthens the fabric that keeps us human when the wider systems around us are fraying” is spot on. Timely and motivational.
It reminds me that even if I don’t live in an attractive, close-knit, rural community, that community is possible —necessary even if we mean to maintain our humanity in this current landscape. Thank you.