I wasn’t there when my grandmother died, 9,000 kilometers away in Mexico. She was already being cremated when I heard about her passing. My grandfather had died two years before, but when he left us all his loved ones were there next to him in an intimate goodbye. That made all the difference - to us certainly, and perhaps to him too, I’d like to think. Distance matters, and not just in a pandemic when we are separated from many of those we love.
It’s true that social distancing, physical separation and emotional disconnection are all intertwined in these strange and trying times, but distance is something that has been present throughout my life and the lives of so many others for centuries, since under capitalism we are systematically separated from one another in every sphere of life, not just socially-distanced in order to keep each-other safe.
We distance ourselves from violence so we don’t have to see it. We forget the distance slaves had to travel to arrive in America, and the stories of distant exploitation that were woven under the cloak of colonialism and are still being woven through the supply chains of today.
