I've wanted to write this post for such a long time. I'd tried the previous two years but turns out, that was too soon and too much other and very immediately stressful stuff was happening which didn't allow me to have clear thoughts about anything. First fact about grief, it doesn't make you suddenly have a wonderful sense of clarity and perspective in your life. I still worry about my career, about my relationships and about a thousand other things that definitely didn't need to take up that brain space but there we are.
In the most appropriate of manners, this was delayed by a whole week because I was worried and agonising over those very things. Clarity and perspective are funny things and I sometimes wonder if I'll ever have a good grasp of either of those qualities.
So, not perfect, but closer to 'ready' than I've ever felt for the past three years, and I talk a lot about how I want to see multiple narratives around grief and loss, and unfortunately I'm in a very good position to write them.
What I'm not going to write about is how it happened, what that was like, and my memory of it are actually pretty hazy anyway. According to my planner I was up and about and doing things - I had a Masters degree to do and a job and new friends to make so I didn't know what else to do. My lack of a clear timeline, as someone with an usually excellent memory, would suggest to me that that's probably a pretty traumatic period of my life. So, whilst I might get there eventually I don't have any insights right now that aren't 'that was really awful and I never want to think about it again'.
I have though, been ready to talk about this basically since it happened. I have been endlessly frustrated with representations of what it means to lose someone and to grieve, and on top of that, how that means people communicate that with me. How I so often don't get to talk about my own truth because people come with their own definite ideas about what that experience must feel like.
Losing someone isn't just being devastated by your loss, it's a thousand different things that range from the terrible to the just very strange.
I feel for the most part I've only just realised he's really gone, and now I say it out loud, not just allude to it. I get that this is uncomfortable, but it's also true that if you didn't know the person it's a lot easier to get on board with them being dead than it is if it's someone who formed an actual part of your life. That trope about expecting them to walk through the door is so real, because all their stuff is still there, they're still in all the photos, so why wouldn't they be coming back?
On top of that I am right there with the morbid fascination, for the previous three years I have staunchly avoided anything that deals with death in an in-depth manner. I have left it exclusively to the realm of crime drama in which everyone recovers from their grief within ten minutes because they're too busy trying to prove they didn't kill the person in question. This week Caitlin Doughty released her book 'From Here to Eternity', a follow-up to her first book 'The Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' - both are an in-depth exploration of death, dying and cultural reactions to both. I heard a review on a podcast and I immediately put it on pre-order.
This year I can already feel myself bringing it up more and more. I have cackled with laughter at how fucking weird funerals are and I hope I can always find people to share those laughs with. More than anything I realised that there was no way to be disrespectful to the person I lost because they were mine to lose. I don't have to spend significant dates hidden away and alone if I don't want to. Everyone else may have their own opinions and predictions on how they would mark those days but you can't transform who you are or the things you need for the sake of marking an occasion. I have always found to be healed by spending time being with the people I love and those days are no different.
Most of all I do not only have a life which carries on in spite of that loss, I have a life that includes that loss. And that's fine. It's as real and normal to me as the people who I still have. It comes up all the time, and is relevant all the time, and I'm very okay with that.
Maybe what will be helpful from all of this is the idea that there is no right way for you to live your life and feel your feelings on the other side of a loss like that. You have the rest of your life to grieve and you certainly don't have to be in any rush to display any emotions on any sort of timeline. It's okay to laugh at the absurdity of a life that includes something like this, it's okay to never want to talk about it and then want to talk about it all the time for months. You are not a machine and you don't to have perfect emotions to display to anyone.
And if you're someone who has someone close to you who is grieving, please don't only want to hear about it when they're crying and sad. It sounds awful but I really do consider this to be 'doing the least' - I appreciate that sadness is the easiest and most obvious emotion but processing someone's loss is made of lots of things. Your relationship with death can change entirely, and things that you thought were off-limits before become very real conversations that you have to have almost daily. Let your person talk about it, let them talk about the practicalities of living without their person without squirming away from them. Losing someone is weird. It's weird, one moment they're there and the next they aren't and that takes a long time to get to grips with.
Let your friend or loved one be weird and talk about weird stuff, let them live their new reality. My family almost never mentioned the reality of death but that changes when you lose the youngest member of your family first. Somehow it didn't make the prospect of losing anyone else more scary, but it did make it a lot more real. You may call it morbid but a death in the family is already the definition of morbid.
In the most appropriate of manners, this was delayed by a whole week because I was worried and agonising over those very things. Clarity and perspective are funny things and I sometimes wonder if I'll ever have a good grasp of either of those qualities.
*****
So, not perfect, but closer to 'ready' than I've ever felt for the past three years, and I talk a lot about how I want to see multiple narratives around grief and loss, and unfortunately I'm in a very good position to write them.
What I'm not going to write about is how it happened, what that was like, and my memory of it are actually pretty hazy anyway. According to my planner I was up and about and doing things - I had a Masters degree to do and a job and new friends to make so I didn't know what else to do. My lack of a clear timeline, as someone with an usually excellent memory, would suggest to me that that's probably a pretty traumatic period of my life. So, whilst I might get there eventually I don't have any insights right now that aren't 'that was really awful and I never want to think about it again'.
I have though, been ready to talk about this basically since it happened. I have been endlessly frustrated with representations of what it means to lose someone and to grieve, and on top of that, how that means people communicate that with me. How I so often don't get to talk about my own truth because people come with their own definite ideas about what that experience must feel like.
Losing someone isn't just being devastated by your loss, it's a thousand different things that range from the terrible to the just very strange.
I feel for the most part I've only just realised he's really gone, and now I say it out loud, not just allude to it. I get that this is uncomfortable, but it's also true that if you didn't know the person it's a lot easier to get on board with them being dead than it is if it's someone who formed an actual part of your life. That trope about expecting them to walk through the door is so real, because all their stuff is still there, they're still in all the photos, so why wouldn't they be coming back?
On top of that I am right there with the morbid fascination, for the previous three years I have staunchly avoided anything that deals with death in an in-depth manner. I have left it exclusively to the realm of crime drama in which everyone recovers from their grief within ten minutes because they're too busy trying to prove they didn't kill the person in question. This week Caitlin Doughty released her book 'From Here to Eternity', a follow-up to her first book 'The Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' - both are an in-depth exploration of death, dying and cultural reactions to both. I heard a review on a podcast and I immediately put it on pre-order.
This year I can already feel myself bringing it up more and more. I have cackled with laughter at how fucking weird funerals are and I hope I can always find people to share those laughs with. More than anything I realised that there was no way to be disrespectful to the person I lost because they were mine to lose. I don't have to spend significant dates hidden away and alone if I don't want to. Everyone else may have their own opinions and predictions on how they would mark those days but you can't transform who you are or the things you need for the sake of marking an occasion. I have always found to be healed by spending time being with the people I love and those days are no different.
Most of all I do not only have a life which carries on in spite of that loss, I have a life that includes that loss. And that's fine. It's as real and normal to me as the people who I still have. It comes up all the time, and is relevant all the time, and I'm very okay with that.
*****
Maybe what will be helpful from all of this is the idea that there is no right way for you to live your life and feel your feelings on the other side of a loss like that. You have the rest of your life to grieve and you certainly don't have to be in any rush to display any emotions on any sort of timeline. It's okay to laugh at the absurdity of a life that includes something like this, it's okay to never want to talk about it and then want to talk about it all the time for months. You are not a machine and you don't to have perfect emotions to display to anyone.
And if you're someone who has someone close to you who is grieving, please don't only want to hear about it when they're crying and sad. It sounds awful but I really do consider this to be 'doing the least' - I appreciate that sadness is the easiest and most obvious emotion but processing someone's loss is made of lots of things. Your relationship with death can change entirely, and things that you thought were off-limits before become very real conversations that you have to have almost daily. Let your person talk about it, let them talk about the practicalities of living without their person without squirming away from them. Losing someone is weird. It's weird, one moment they're there and the next they aren't and that takes a long time to get to grips with.
Let your friend or loved one be weird and talk about weird stuff, let them live their new reality. My family almost never mentioned the reality of death but that changes when you lose the youngest member of your family first. Somehow it didn't make the prospect of losing anyone else more scary, but it did make it a lot more real. You may call it morbid but a death in the family is already the definition of morbid.
xx
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