Over the last few days, New Orleans has been a surreal place to live. Reports first came that he wasn’t dead. Then he was. They found bombs in his truck. Then more in coolers around the French Quarter. A fire/explosion occurred a few blocks from us in the Bywater. It turned out to be his Airbnb.

The city lost citizens and friends, happy tourists and football fans. Dozens are still battling it out in hospitals.

We’ve got big, big grief, settling in our chests as the shock and surreal moments wear off, as facts replace rumors.

I wanted to write a message, not to New Orleanians, but to the outside world.

Dear people beyond New Orleans …

It’s vital to understand that the city’s grief will not look like yours.

We will get through this. But not by thoughts and prayers—even though we are a city built on deep faith and deft thinkers.

We will get through this, not because we have infrastructure and solid commerce and dependable government, but because we have a community stitched together by lack-thereof. By tragedy as much as celebration.

We will get through this, but our grief will not look like your town or your coping methods.

It will look like a Mardi Gras. And, New Orleans needs this now.

This is a town deeply tied to tragedy. Cholera and covid. Slavery to generational poverty. Fires and floods. Three-quarters of the city was submerged in hot, dirty river water … not for days but for weeks. It’s not years of struggle; it’s centuries.

Kids here are raised on ghost stories of former disasters; grandmothers passing down advice for keeping axes in attics alongside ‘don’t burn the roux.’ Newcomers quickly learn that in revelry, there is reckoning. The grief of New Orleans is not quiet or lonely. It’s public. And garish.

This town, in its pain, will polish up the surface of debauchery till it gleams … and then someone will glue a sequin on it.

New Orleans felt like home the first time I set foot here at the age of 16. It felt like home when I continued to return and return, permanently relocating six years ago. Part of me has always been here.

Because, in my own life, in my own issues, my family likes to quip that I’m either at a 2 or an 11. Emotional middle ground is for others.

I prefer screaming. I will scream my joy over a turkey sandwich before going on an actual, justified tirade. Injustice … or just a really good mayo … I’m loud.

It felt like home here, because New Orleans is the same. She’s at a 2, or she’s at an 11. A city of screamers. A bastion of banshees and caterwaulers. She’s all of us who are just a little too loud for the other towns. Those of us who were born to her … or blessed to move here and fit right in.

This grief will not present like other places. It will be public. Hair-wrenching and heart-broken and protesting and pissed off, but also costumed and splashy, gin-scented and up late. It will follow a Second Line.

We will dance behind so many caskets this week and the next and the next, as is the town’s coping culture. It was borrowed and born of Haiti and of West Africa. Borrowed and born of times of slavery and of arriving refugees. It won’t look like Cincinnati or Cheyenne. It will look like New Orleans.

You might be tempted to look into our fishbowl from another city … see us gathering, Sazeracs in hand, sparkles in hair … and think we are choosing fun over grief.

The irony is … nothing could be further from the truth.

In the revelry is the reckoning. Not only for this latest tragedy but for the ones that came before. People have long been pleading and begging. We have always been gathering and organizing, supplying whatever is not funded. Hurricane repair. Community fridges. Mutual Aid. Catch-basin cleanups. Historic preservation from personal pockets … you will not find a community more inwardly focused than New Orleans.

Especially during Mardi Gras.

We are angry. About this attack. About our sagging buildings, the flooded streets and for our growing, desperate, unhoused population.

Our infrastructure looks about as sturdy as two toothpicks in the maw of a maniac.

Our community does not.

We do the work. We arrive for the party. Often, the party is the work. The community is already kicking in.

People here are creating scholarship funds, organizing huge concerts and tiny backyard fetes. The citizens––not the city government––will supply the mental and mutual aid. We will all tip and comfort traumatized bartenders, servers and bouncers in the wake of this attack.

These men and women did the unthinkable, barricading bar doors, shielding patrons inside. They shielded them again as they all emerged to step around dead bodies. They showed up to sweep up broken glass and trash, bracing for the sight of blood.

You know those posts? The bollards that rise from the concrete at sunset? They formerly symbolized the party. We’ve stood by them for a thousand nights, adjusting our top hats, minding our go-cups, stopping for a great trumpet solo or to let an over-served tourist stumble by.

Now, they symbolize this tragedy.

They were being fixed, is not an acceptable answer.

Now, in our grief, we are growing loud. We, the citizens, will support both the heroes and the victims through this. We know how. The community has incredible infrastructure for tragedies.

But our grief and coping methods will not look like yours. Our infrastructure for crisis involves a barstool and a great band. Tip the band, you feed the town––literally and emotionally.

We will have life at an 11; always. We will need Mardi Gras to get through this.

Twelfth Night approaches. Our first parade is three days from now. Our streets might be washed clean, but we will know it was there. We will still see it … all that blood. Those bollards, now symbolizing something awful. Fear that something else could happen. And we will gather anyway. We will tip the band and dance in the road.

To know New Orleans is to love her. Even when the fishnets are ripped, and the mascara is strewn. Perhaps, especially so.

If you know us and you love us, we ask you not to judge this method of grief that does not look like yours. We ask that you join it.

Come down here for Mardi Gras or for a quiet weekend beyond. Be a part of our garish reckoning. Pack a top hat. Grab a plastic cup. Paint your face. Cry it off among us.

TIP YOUR HOSPITALITY WORKERS.

These humans saved lives on New Year’s Eve.

Don’t judge us. Come join us. Come live at an 11.

To love New Orleans isn’t always easy or pretty. But … this is who we are, and where we are … and goddamn does it feel good.

NOTE:

If you’d like to help financially, you can donate to the Greater New Orleans Fund, which is raising money for those in hospitals and for the families of those we lost.