“Death is like chocolate. I can only handle so much.”
It seems
that we store up the dead. We collect them with little choice. Everyone has
lost someone and someone has lost someone else. Years may go by but we still
talk to them, a long distance pen pal who has never written back. We usually half
expect that they will. Death is the most feared of all things but we linger in
it afterward, guessing, crying and pleading with the unknown. Many of us believe we
know what lies in waiting, others are convinced nothing is waiting at all. How
the fuck do they know? How can we ever
know anything at all? Death is the big question mark haunting all our days and
the sheer terror that often haunts our nights. Sometimes, I dream dead people.
From the
time I was a young boy, death followed me. It pursues everyone but that
mattered little to my experience. As a matter of fact, the death of my
favourite pet introduced me to the idea around age 5. I’ve known three types of
physical death: the death of a loved one (including pets), the death of a construct
(strangers, celebrities) and the death of a character (literature, comic books,
scripture). I have always catalogued my grief. I compartmentalize each event and
store it for use later. Every year the collective grows. I tend to keep my
friends close and death does not exclude them. I have known the depth of grief
and the height of recovery but the entire time death has eluded me, although not
always for a lack of trying.
“There is no justice, just mercy.”
Grief is
more painful than physical injury. The death of my Mother hurt far more than
when that steam radiator fell down onto my leg back in 1978. The sources may be
different but the effects can linger for years. Physical injury fades with time
but grief cements itself, returning over and over again depending on the
triggers you might have. Emotional pain does more damage and, apparently, never truly
goes away. Lasting broken heartedness does not scar over, it simply hides. It’s
like a blind zit that won’t pop, ready to come to a head at any time and at any
place. Grief cuts to the core. With time the visitations may lessen, separated by
a lesser meter, but they linger, waiting to strike in the most
inconvenient manner. The dead never
truly disappear, unless you let them.
Most people
move on. Some people never do. I have never understood how a man, married for
40 years, can remarry only 6 months after losing a wife any more than some old woman who tosses herself onto her late husband’s
coffin. Grief is a strange thing and no one experiences it in the same manner.
The way people grieve over the death of something significant varies, they are
unique to each of us. Everyone grieves differently but the pain remains the
same. The death of the family dog may deeply wound one sibling, but is of
little more than a passing thought to another. Some people embrace the death of
a loved one while others survive through ambivalence. In the end, you cannot be
a little bit pregnant. If you cut of the finger tip off two different men, they
both feel the same pain. It is the degree by which we suffer that defines our
misery.
Some of the
greatest suffering I have known has been
at the loss of a loved one. I have known an abundance of physical suffering but
all that anguish, all piled together, does not equal the pain of even one
example, including my own. It is hard to explain what I mean by this. All I
know is that every moment of grief I have experienced feels like every other
experience I have had with grief. The hurt is the same just on different
levels, to differing degrees. When my cat Gizmo passed, I was heartbroken.
When my Mom died, I was heartbroken. Initially, the emotional response was the
same but time and the scope of each relationship determined any lasting effect.
Some cuts may go deeper but they all break the skin.
When my Mom
hit the floor she was already dead. Apparently, God was gracious in her death.
No suffering, no awareness, just here then gone. In hindsight, it was a mercy killing. I can only imagine the
challenges she would have known had she lived. I certainly know that I have
asked myself whether she would be rolling over in her grave, more than a few
times. Not an easy feat considering her cremation. She got out easy if you ask
me. It’s gratifying to know she deserved that much. When Doug hit the concrete
he was gone. Those few brief seconds of terror did not catch him nor hinder his
fall. I can only imagine his final thoughts. He deserved better than to end
that way. From a distance, both these encounters with death may appear
separate, but all these years later and it is clear to me that all that pain,
all that misery, it all comes from the same place. The variables remain but the
sorrow, the broken part of me lingers
for both. There is a common ground beyond how each landed.
“Life is a beautiful ride but I’m hoofing it.”
Some deaths
are easy compared to others. I think human beings get used to pain, no matter
what form it may take at a specific event or time. It’s not that we aren’t
surprised by some. In hindsight, many times we should have seen it coming. For many, the death of someone close does
little but to ruffle the pace. When someone we know of dies there can be a great
awkwardness. Whether we have known them in passing or simply know of them, the
death of a stranger may not contain the same emotional baggage but may act as a
milestone, a point of reference, a vernacular. Nothing connects human beings
more than grief. Out of every death may
come compassion whether through empathy or the simple fact that we have all
been there and done just that.
In early
March of 2022, a member of my extended family, who is also a close Facebook
friend, lost her husband. I never met him or interacted with him on social
media but I was aware of who he was. All the dialogue, all the photographs I
saw over the last few years made it more like I knew him rather than merely
knowing of him. I have to admit that I could see it coming but that is
regardless to the loss experienced by my friend. When I learned of his death, I
instantly knew exactly how she was feeling and what she was feeling. I could
relate from a common place, a shared nightmare. Her pain was her pain but my
pain made me not only sympathetic to her cause but reflective, facing ghosts
that have lingered in a silent place for years.
When Joan
Rivers died, 30 years of encounters with her ended in a doctor’s office. I was
heartbroken at her passing and so were 10 000s of adoring fan. I have to admit
I shed a few tears. I did not know her in person. I never met her and I never
saw her live and in concert. Still, she was one of those constants throughout
my life. I experienced the same sadness when Mary Tyler Moore died shortly
thereafter. To be honest, I was more affected by these celebrity deaths than when
certain family members passed away. Apparently, it is not the physical
relationship itself that manifests grief but your exposure to the individual. Every
death, it would appear, teaches something new. You do not have to be “close” to
someone for their death to affect you. The slightest appearance by the cliché and
those feelings rise to the surface. Lately, celebrity after celebrity have been
dropping like flies. Betty White, Whitney Houston, even Desmond Tutu, still
hold much favour even though each has been gone long enough to miss. It’s like
we grieve by osmosis.
“There is no monster in your closet.”
The Bible
is full of dead people. Every single one of those characters would be long gone
and buried (well most of them). My Christianity started early and progressed
well into my late 20’s. I was a heathen and an abomination but I did it in
private so no one ever really knew. I believed every single word and carried
that with me throughout my adulthood. I was a sinner, a saint and a servant
all in one. Some of those deaths were subtle additions but some were hard to
ignore. There was Judas hanging from a tree (Matthew 27:1–10). King Saul was savagely impaled by sword then died
on a mountain side (1 Samuel 31). Jesus
just hung there until he was dead (Mark
15: 25). I have to say that for me, as a child, the most flagrant example
of death in the Bible came from the
book of Genesis. I’m not talking about when Pharaoh slays all those
Egyptian children or even when God reacts in kind. The idea of almost every
single person on this planet drowning to death at God’s hand not only opened my
childhood eyes but began to wedge in questions regardless of my good Christian
training. I learnt early what death was and, in the same measure, learnt that
one should really be afraid, very afraid. If God killed his very own son what
would he do to me?
Abstract and ambiguous experiences
with death can also effect us. Whether a character in Shakespeare, an obituary
or even Spider-Man, the existence of death is not a figment of our imagination.
The stories, these tales, act as a cushion preparing us for the real tragedies
that this life will bring. The characters and their experiences reveal not only
the substance of their life but the manner of their death. We can learn from
them. They teach us. They condition us. I believe that this is what all these
“little deaths” are meant for. We pile up corpses like fallen leaves or broken
glass. Literature taught me all about death. I was 10 years old when my great-grandfather
passed. My Mom, did not have to explain a thing to me. I had heard and read it
all before. In a sense, all that exposure helped me get through it. I loved him
more than anything but understanding the process of death, regardless of any religious
implication, allowed my childishness to be placed in context. I understood
early on that everyone is going to die and not all deaths are packages wrapped
up in bows. Death is harsh, whether on paper or in person.
“There is more to this life than we know.”
I had a
Near Death Experience (NDE) in 1995 when
I attempted to off myself in response to the death of my partner. I saw the
tunnel. I saw the light. I even saw a friend or two standing in that bright.
Obviously, I returned from that place. I faced death and survived to tell about
it. I did not die. This is the point, I suppose. It’s common ground. We all
come face to face with the death through one form or another. Death comes in
degrees and so does grief. It is what we do with these encounters that will
help to determine how we react to further encounters. Death litters our lives
just like joy and sorrow. You get one shot, one chance. When you’re dead,
you’re dead and there is nothing else to it. When people say they died in their
NDE, I scoff. If you died then what the hell are you doing here?
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