At what point do you have to stop running along a path, and admit it's a blind alley, admit you're lost? For the past two months, I've gone from a walk into a sprint since my uncle died and only now, when the world expects me to 'be ok', do I have to acknowledge that I'm not.
I'm still in mourning. It's the same for my mum and brother. Before there was a benchmark to aim for, prompting you to keep going: a church and priest to find, a funeral to arrange, tables and chairs for the wake who-know-how many will attend, his apartment to clean, his estate to sort out, his life's possessions and all the things connecting him to the system, as a citizen. Cancelled, like debt. What's left after the public displays of mourning, reminiscence and physical goodbyes, is just you. Friends text to see how I am, some haven't even bothered, most assume the worst is behind me. They're wrong. When you lose a loved one, the worst is ahead of you. The intensity cools down a little, that much I know. It's been two months and the soothing effect of time is already noticeable. I can think of him without the fear of immediate tears flowing. Instead, what happens is I cry at unpredictable, intermittent moments. Little things lie in wait to set me off like boobie traps. Watching a TV or movie death scene provokes tears of emotion rawer than the script surely had intended. I find myself relating to characters on duff daytime soaps, and think maybe that writer incorporated a little bit of their knowledge and experience into this.
"What they don't tell you when someone dies is that it sucks. People talk about time being a healer, but right now it just really sucks" a character called Aiden on Home & Away said at his young wife's funeral. And he's right.
Well meaning people, some are friends, some acquaintances, giving me their cliched bile, telling me what they 'know'. You don't know unless you've been here, I don't care how intuitive you think you are.
In a hospital scene in Neighbours waiting to see if young mum Bridgette will be ok, her husband Declan snapped at his teenage friends "If you can't be positive, then just go home". His impatience at their inability to offer understanding of his all-consuming panic hastily spilled over. I feel like if these people haven't got anything useful to say, just say nothing. Don't try and feel your way through, because it's too soon and it doesn't help. Far from it, it actually angers me. These people, stumbling through the emotional carnage of a broken down 'me' with the casualness that only comes from never having experienced this kind of loss. Maybe they're underestimating the uncle-niece relationship? Maybe they don't have a strong bond there to relate to. Some family relationships on paper strike a stronger, universal resonance- Dad/Mum-daughter, I get it. Brother-sister, ah, that's a terrible loss. The assumption that they can speak to me as if time should have done it's healing by now, and everything should be alright? It galls me.
Hey chick, how's things? what's up?
Awful, that's how it is. I feel like I've been unplugged from the Matrix and for the time being, I've got gloupy porridge on the horizon and no tender, juicy steaks and fine red wines in sight. There's no other way to cut this, so I'm going to come straight out with it. What you now know, what is tangeable, real and unavoidable, is the realisation that the end is always around the corner. Not the knowing death is guaranteed to us all. I'm talking about feeling death everywhere. Take the 'knowledge' and follow that thought through to its conclusion- you live, you die and there's no timeline, only hope. People talk about the young dying being unfair, because that's how it feels- a sense of injustice, like they've had no time. When the old die, we say 'they had a good, long life'. These are all platitudes. There IS no guarantee. The young dying is just the young dying- a shame, but unavoidable. I read these emails from people, going about their business as a good drone does, as I used to, with my plans and dreams and my bullshit. I got a throbbing headache last night, I've been feeling a little fluey, so tried to put it down to that. But all I could think after downing glasses of water and taking aspirin, as I felt a vein along the front of my head throb, was how this could be it for me. I could die of an embolism right now! The stock response is, 'you're being paranoid' and the answer is 'yeah, I am' but the truth? I could die of that embolism, it could be my time right now. 29 years was what I got.
My uncle passed and not one of us has experienced a dream, vision or feeling where his spirit has been back. Might sound crazy to some, but I believe in a soul, and that this isn't the end. Anyone who's confronted the absolute stillness of a corpse believes in something beyond this. But I have no answers as to where or how or anything. Heaven as a construct sounds beautiful, a place of pure love. But this is a world that hasn't prepared us for that, so it's a stretch in imagination or faith to say the least. I believe he's someplace better, and it's always easier to say that about others and to others. Not surprisingly, I feel better believing he is safe and protected and not in the pain he would have been in by the end. But when I think about where I will go, how does that work? I'm logical and the leaps of faith aren't something I can grasp while I'm still so seated within my body, if not a little unsettled with my place in the world right now.
I don't feel ok with the insecurity of not having the time to get adjusted to my eventual death. I don't think 'being dead' is something any of us should individually worry about because by then it's fact and the loss effects those left behind more than the person gone. My worry is the actual part of dying, of slipping away, and of finding solace and peace when the time comes. I want to know I'll be able to accept what's happening, once I 'know'. If I accomplish anything in life, I need to evolve enough to believe that. And yet, here I am alive and well (God willing), dwelling on the end.
I'm Sorry For Your Loss...
Are you? Or is it just a nice thing to say to someone whose doing that thing you've seen others experience. Yes, grieving. I underestimated how much it would absorb you, or could do. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I underestimated how finite that line is drawn between the 'before death' and 'after'. May as well be night and day.
When I think about it, of course it hurts. It should hurt if the person meant anything to you. If you love, then you guarantee yourself loss at some point. If you live, then you must face the reality of death- as a spectator of the end or participant whose time it is to meet their own.
I wrote this all because I realise how difficult it is to deal with a grieving friend- what do I say? what should I do? I wrote this to work out why it was that I find myself getting as angered by the peppy tone in well-meaning emails as I am annoyed by the total avoidance of the subject by others. I'm riled because life carries on, but is never the same as it was before that day, before 7 August 2009 when we found out. I'm riled because whether it's 8 weeks since or 2 weeks, nobody but those who have been through it know how difficult this is. Arranging a funeral is like throwing a big party in a country where you don't speak the language and have no guestlist. It's the hardest job I've ever done in the most alien of circumstances, yet people ask me 'How comes it takes so long?' with a straight face. You remove your loved one, a part of you, from the world
and people just expect you to move on. Just like that? I'm riled because when I say what happened and say I've been busy, it should not follow to ask 'can't wait to hear all you've been up to!'. Did you not hear what I said?
So in answer to the question, am I ok? No I'm not. I can't tell you when I ever will be, but given there are only two ends of the spectrum- life and death- I know at some point I'll move back along the line and rejoin the Matrix, that middle ground. I'll let time take away the burn of this loss, take away the endless questions about how he died or speculation 'was it swine flu?' by my loved ones, make feeling at a loss for what to do with myself and re-assessing my priorities and goals in life redundant. One day, I'll be alright, but that time is not now, dear friends. Patience helps and the distraction of sports chatter (see previous blog entries- thanks US Open) and a surprise trip to Vegas (eternally thankful, Mo Mo) and The Osmonds. But more than anything, please accept that when I say I'm not ok, you don't have to do or say anything. Understanding as best you can is enough.
