On Grief (Part 1): Initial Thoughts
This is a post (or a series of posts) that I’ve been meaning to write for a long time. And yet, I’ve avoided it both because the topic is so complex and because I’m shying away from all the emotions that this will bring up within me. But, honoring my introduction post to this Substack, I’m going to start writing and see where this takes me. I’m going to try and avoid the perfection that I’m imposing on myself.
Grief. It’s an emotion so heavily loaded. In fact, if you do a simple Google search, some people don’t categorize it as an emotion at all, but rather an experience that is accompanied by a host of emotions. It’s no wonder my mind goes in infinite directions whenever I try to confront it, to write about it; why it’s so hard to organize my thoughts.
And yet, I keep coming back to it. All the stories I’m writing, all the stories I’m conceptualizing, they all center around grief. One or two are about the grief of losing an identity or a homeland; but most of them are about losing someone. And isn’t the loss of life also the loss of identity? Of home? Writing about grief, forcing myself to confront these emotions, to experience them through my characters, is perhaps one way that I’m processing what it means.
In one of my stories that transcend three time periods, a woman loses her father to cancer, and is grappling with the grief of that, while also trying not to become him - with his angry outbursts and all - in her own marriage. In another, parents replace their deceased child with a robot, but find him to be inadequate, no matter how hard they try to configure the robot to be a replica. In a third, a man doesn’t know he hasn’t fully processed the grief of his father’s passing, and must feel a host of emotions before he finds the one (grief) that fits.
All of these stories are teaching me about control. Grief feels so overwhelming because we don’t know how to rein it in. It comes for us whether we are ready or not. When we least expect it, it submerges us in a deluge. We don’t know how to dampen it. And because it is so scary, we try to put it off into an endless tomorrow so that we can simply survive.
The thing is, grief never really goes away. Often, it shrouds itself in layers of emotions that are less complicated, even as it leaves us forever changed. That is what one of my characters must experience - they must peel back the layers of themselves, the surface-level emotions, and, even the deeper ones. They must live in their dissatisfaction of who they are, until they are finally able to process their own grief.
My characters are also teaching me about compassion. To put myself in the shoes of a character - imagined though as they may be, all writers know that characters take on a life of their own - while never having had the experience myself is an exercise in reaching out, in trying to understand. And yet, I know that true understanding only comes with experience.
And I have experienced, a fair amount of grief. Probably about the same as most other people my age, maybe even less. I’ve known what it is like to lose someone who you expected to lose (due to age or chronic illness), watching them deteriorate over time. And I’ve known what it’s like to lose someone suddenly, when you least expect it. I’ve known what it’s like to be the partner to someone dealing with crushing grief - while grappling with my own that I didn’t think I deserved to feel or needed to buffer myself from. I’ve known what it is to almost lose someone, and then have them come back to life. I’ve felt the collective grief of vanishing a people simply to occupy their land (see my post on Gaza). And I’ve known - and don’t we all - what it’s like to imagine the loss of someone whose presence keeps you afloat.
Each of these experiences were different - some easier, some harder, some more complex, some with surprising silver linings. But, through each of them, I found that I turned to community, to the people who I could call on and who would be there, immediately, unequestioningly. In each instance, speaking my grief out loud was a balm, one that helped me quiet my mind, that reduced my sobs to whimpers.
So, it seems incredible that, despite our own demise being the only certitude in life, we rarely discuss it. While the vast majority of us will experience the grief of someone close to us in life, conversations around grief aren’t normalized. When the topic does come up, it makes us uncomfortable, like we don’t quite know what to do or say, what’s okay or what should remain unsaid.
All this tiptoeing around grief can’t be comfortable for the person who is grieving. It creates an environment where they feel like they can’t bring up their grief, that it is too much of a burden. It becomes this negative emotion, instead of simply an emotion that many of us will experience, that will change us in invaluable ways. And we start to become a society with unprocessed grief, where we don an exterior of being okay, when really a devastating sadness lurks underneath.
I know this, and yet, there are parts of me that still cannot come to terms with some aspects of grief. A couple of weeks ago, my partner and I were considering a hypothetical scenario: if it were possible (which it is not), would we want to upload our consciousness to AI so that we could live on well beyond our bodies? We both decided we wouldn’t - that there is joy in growing old, in the finiteness of life which drives us to make the most of our limited time, in the discovery of what it means to experience ourselves and each other at each of life’s stages. And neither one of us have ever had the need to ‘leave our mark on the world’; that seems like much too much pressure and filled with too much hubris. (Now, there is AI technology where you can upload a person’s entire digital footprint to create a virtual simulation of an individual - similar to what Laurie Anderson did for her partner, Lou Reed after his passing. But that’s not what we were talking about.)
What the conversation did lead us to, though, was that we need to start doing some planning for our own eventual demise - living wills, regular wills, life insurance, etc. I know this is the practical thing to do, that it will only be advantageous for respecting our wishes in our final days or after our passing. And yet, everytime my partner brings it up, I feel confronted by the inevitability of his mortality, and I quickly change the subject.
Last week, though, I felt ready to begin to consider it. To begin to plan for those conversations that would span weeks and months. And I agreed. And then, it was time for me to go to bed. My partner wanted to continue watching TV for a little while longer, and I found myself suddenly overcome with a deep sadness that burrowed itself into my bones: the sadness of sleeping in an empty bed, a foreshadowing of what was to come if he were to pass before me. Clearly, I had not entirely dealt with my emotions around the inevitability of grief.
I still haven’t. But I’m trying. I’m reading more about grief - a lot more. I’m trying to process what it means for me. And I’m posting this, leaving it up here to lean into community, to allow myself to begin to confront what this grief would mean.
As I go on this journey, I’ll be posting more. There’s so much I have to say, and I know that I’ll learn along the way. Like what it means to support someone who is grieving. Or the parts of yourself grief allows you to unlock. Or the way in which the brain copes with grief. Or how grief can coexist with other emotions, like relief. There are topics that I haven’t even yet conceived of yet, because I’m still learning.
And I hope you read and it resonates or helps or heals. It may not be anything different from what you know, from what many of you may have experienced. But I hope in writing it and putting it into the world, it feels less lonely.