On Grief

I know three families who tragically lost someone they love last week. The first was a suicide. The second was a murder. The third was a body that gently lay down its arms in the oncology ward.

It was a week for sadness. A sadness quadrupled.

It’s startling how the death of someone not-as-important to you can trigger grief for someone who was-that-important to you. I lost my father to brain cancer just over a year ago. I think death becomes sadder when you’ve experienced a similar loss first-hand. When you’ve mourned someone deeply, you really do wish your friends never have to experience the same sorrow.

Everyone knows that death is a gloomy matter. You’re taught from an early age to put on a big smile when you open a present, even if it’s not the one you wanted, and be sad when your friend tells you she had to flush her favourite fish. But there’s no tutorial that prepares you for the heartache you feel when a person, your Person, dies.

To me, grief is the distress caused by having to process a very unreal reality. Cruelly, the first order of business is always the concluding of the deceased’s affairs. The termination of a person’s signified existence to match the end of his physical existence.

Anyone who’s lost anyone knows that the affairs of a life aren’t buried with the body it belonged to. Wrapping up a life that’s already been cosmically ‘wrapped up’ is more than serving sandwiches at a funeral. The juxtaposition of death’s finality against the marks of a life being lived (jeans and holey socks in the cupboard, business cards, that name in your contact list, an active Facebook account) only serves to underline the intense deadness of the Person you loved. The Person you love.

What follows are the would-have-beens. When I was growing up, I remember my father commenting each year that his father would have turned 91 that day. 92. 93. 94 – if he been alive. I found it a silly practice at the time. He would-never-be 91, 92, 93 or 94, and there seemed little sense in acknowledging the aging of someone who was not aging.

Now that my own father has died, I find myself considering the would-have-beens. If he was alive, he would-have-been able to walk me down the aisle this year. He would-have-been around to meet my fiancé. He would-have-been 72 this year.

The would-have-beens seem to be a natural response to death and grief. They’re our way of adjusting our view of the world – an oscillation between unattainable opportunities and the life you continue to build each day.

Lemony Snicket expresses this so perfectly in Horseradish – Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid: ‘It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one ... It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.’

I’m not sure if anyone’s ever done with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s final stage of grief – acceptance. It would mean henceforth being OK with not having your Person around. Instead, there are days when the world is clear, and times when you find yourself stumbling in the dark at the top of the stairs, unsure why things aren’t the way you wish them to be. The phantom stairs we trip over are uncomfortable, painful even, but they are also Ways of Remembering. They are the result of memories being pulled into the present – that continual swing between remembrance and moving forward.

Last week’s sadness was for three friends, who will need to amend their realities, and for myself, because I’m not sure death ever really seems real. I do like to think, though, that the reason we miss our step on some days is because that step was once there. And even though time has lapsed and I’ve got a better footing now, I’m strangely grateful for the reminder that my dad was once alive, and we did-have some pretty good times.