Death is easy; grief is hard.

For Pat x

I have an uncomfortable relationship with death. I write about it quite a lot in the Lily series. It’s hard to write about crime and mystery without someone dying. I try to describe death forensically. The stopping of the clock, the final beat of the heart either peacefully or catastrophically can be created by words. But it does not come easily because I know what comes next. The loss. Grief is excruciating and it hurts in ways you can’t imagine until your in the belly of the beast.

It hurts your body. There is a terrible weight to grief. It makes it hard to get up or lie easily or raise your arms to complete the normal tasks of the everyday. It hurts to open your eyes and then more to close them. Colour is sucked out of the world…not even romantically sepia, just dull drained versions of what was once vibrant. Smells can assault your sensibilities. Particularly the scents you associate with the one who is now lost to you. (My mother is daphne).  And sounds…music, songs and at times the mindless humming of half remember tunes brings acid tears that burn the lids and scorch a path over pallid cheeks. Grief is brutal, wounding, confounding, agonising. It also can be a period of terrible fear. What has happened to my person? Where are they? Is there anything?

I suspect death, on the other hand, is less so. Many reading this might disagree but allow me to explain. The dying process may be fraught with pain, discomfort and panic. And I know from losing people I love, that can last a significant period of time, but I believe, from those same observations, the last bit of the journey is not theatrical. It seems that the transition from being to being no more is a very quiet affair. The drift between the two states appears to be a momentary calm, unconsciousness and then stillness. The last breath is not Shakespearean at all. Both my parents had terrible months leading up the end, but as if by magic (I know it was a biological thing), it ended. More correctly they ended. And then grief started.

My response is always two-fold. I have an elevated sense that an extraordinary thing has happened, and the person now knows the ultimate answer. They know what is on the other side. This of course is different for everyone given that faith, religious teachings, spirituality or science fact informs our beliefs. But directly after the slight euphoria, comes the fall. I don’t want to grieve. I am absolutely afraid that my ability to hold it all together will abandon me. I am genuinely distressed by my own overwhelming sense of loss. And the more I try to avoid the pain, the more out of control it becomes. The harder I stuff it down, the more volcanic it becomes on its exit. I then cry myself into dehydration, a migraine and sleeplessness. The nights are terrible, the days are exhausting and I wear despair like an open wound.

Grief is unbearable. And yet we must bear it. And perhaps worst of all, it ends. I don’t know when or how, I just know that eventually we get up and start walking about. We work, play, eat, reconnect and make sense of it all. We package it up into something we can carry. Not necessarily a smaller parcel but one that we become strong enough to hold.

There are many deaths. The too soon, the brutal, the idiotic, the gone before they lived, the globally condemnable and the plainly incomprehensible. In every instance it brings pain. And I would seek to give advice, but I really have nothing wise to give. Other than what I’ve learned from losing friends, family and vicarious others.

Firstly, give your grief some oxygen. Your heart deserves it. Your love for that person deserves it. Go with the sadness, cry and curl into a ball and pull the blankets over your head if it helps. Then give your person’s story some oxygen. Don’t be afraid to talk about them. Bring their narrative to life, let everything about them have a place in the unfolding of their time. What makes you cry today, will make you laugh tomorrow. Memorialise the person in some way. Doesn’t have to be a funeral service, but a mark must be made. Do something that honours that life by making yours extraordinary. Find kindness and worth in all the small things. The bigger things will take care of themselves for a while. And in amongst the many things accept that this is what it is to be alive. Death will come, for some too soon. So make the days count, the hours and minutes too. Bear the grief, be stronger for it, live passionately.

How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. —A.A. Milne