Grief in the Bardo

April 2021

I think the bardo is something like purgatory or limbo set in DC. (Giving a spiritual place a physical location, and making that DC — there’s a pretty interesting allusion right there.) It functions as a place for all the characters to tell their story to the main character, the boy that the character of Nick Offerman is talking to. It allows the ghosts a place to talk, a person, so to speak, to talk to.

As for the living, I honestly don’t know. Listening to this book is difficult and I feel like I am missing so many things that I would be able to pick up by just reading it. I can barely watch television without subtitles, and having no visual aid is really making it difficult to concentrate. I think the bardo applies to the living as it is the time of their grief — like, the longer the ghost remains in the bardo, the stronger the living’s grief will be, and that is why some of the ghosts are urging the boy to move on, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s that moment that the living come to and exist in but never see or interact with — they can stand at the steps of a mausoleum and say their peace, but they can never hug their loved one or hear the response. They themselves are in the bardo of their grief.