Grief

We Talk About Sex; We Talk About Death; Why So Little Discussion of This Other Universal Human Experience?

When I was 23, my mother died following a two-and-a-half-year battle with cancer. She had just turned 51. Less than a year later, my girlfriend’s (now my wife Laura) younger brother Ian, a freshman in college, was diagnosed with a cancer so horribly aggressive that Ian’s battle ended after only eight months. And ten years after my mother’s death, my father died of a heart attack (my first experience with sudden loss, rather than the protracted variety. They’re different but neither has much to recommend it).

I mention all this to convey that the following thoughts are based on some degree of experience.

My parents never told me anything about grief. My father’s older brother had died at fourteen when my father was ten, and though my mother eventually filled me in on some of the details, my father talked with me about that monumental loss only once, acknowledging that he had worshipped his big brother and even decades later didn’t like to discuss it. He was much more willing to tell me about my paternal grandfather, who had died before I was born and who I always wished I could have known.¹ But whatever else he might have been willing to share about how much he missed his brother and father, my father never had anything to say about grief itself. Nor did my mother. Having predeceased her parents, her sister, her husband, and her children, it might be that my mother had no firsthand experience of her own to draw on. This might explain the anomalous absence of any mention of grief, because in all other respects she was a marvelous guide to what I should expect to encounter farther along the trail of life.

All of which meant I was unprepared for my first bout with grief following my mother’s death. I had no context, no advice, no warning. My first knowledge of grief was the experience of being ravaged by it. In retrospect, I realize this made the experience even harder.²

Because there are two things about grief:

First, it’s about the worst pain a human can experience. It’s so bad it’s unmooring, unfathomable. The latter literally so, in that it’s bottomless, immeasurable. When you’re in the grip of grief, it feels like it will never end.

Second, it’s a universal of life. As horrible as it is, it’s also utterly normal.

Think about how important it is to set expectations about pain. A good doctor will warn you, “When I reset that broken nose, it’s going to be so explosively painful you’ll think you’re going into shock! But don’t worry, that’s normal and ultimately part of healing.”³

Doesn’t make the pain any less. But at least you know it’s nothing to be alarmed about.

It’s not quite the same thing, but years ago I spent five days at a firearms training course. This was the beginning course; there were three more of increasing intensity I still wish I’d gotten to. In the fourth course, part of the training included a Simunition gunfight in which you drop a half-gallon balloon filled with water died crimson. That is a lot of red liquid splattered on the ground around you. The trainers don’t want you seeing that quantity of real blood for the first time in a real gunfight. They want you to know in advance that you can lose that much blood and still fight on.

My daughter Emma grew up with only her maternal grandparents still alive, so she had an earlier than usual sense that none of us lasts forever. And one day when she was a young teenager, we wound up talking not just about death, but about what it’s like to lose someone you love.

I told her the truth: it’s bad, as hard a thing as we humans have to grapple with on this ride of life. I told her the first year is the worst, when without warning grief can blast into you like a tsunami and pin you to the dark bottom of the ocean, leaving you crying harder and longer than you thought it was possible to cry, so long and hard the only thing that seems to quell it is exhaustion and emptiness. I told her the first year of celebrations is rough—birthdays, holidays, anything that person used to be organically, unquestionably part of. I told her there would be a lot of unsettling dreams, where the person you lost is back with you but something is always wrong. I told her after the first year it gets easier, and that it seems to take about five years before your mind finishes reconstituting itself, reconciled to the reality that the person you loved so much really is gone.

I told her all of this is normal, and that I wanted her to know these things because one day, when it would be her turn to grieve, it wouldn’t hurt any less but it wouldn’t be quite as shocking and bewildering as it was the first time for me. I told her that if I was the one she was grieving for, I hoped she would say to herself, “Oh man, this sucks exactly like Dad told me it would!” I told her that in those moments, I hoped she’d feel I was with her.

We laughed and cried a lot during that conversation. We’ve had a fair number over the years I’ll never forget, but that was among the best. And I hope one day it’ll be among the most valuable.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long time but have put it off—probably for the same reasons people don’t talk about grief generally. It’s a sad subject, even a fearful one. My subsequent bouts have been easier, because the earlier losses happened when I was younger; because back then I didn’t know what to expect (didn’t know there was anything to expect); and because losing your parents and a future brother-in-law who was already like a brother is generally harder than losing a teacher or friend.

But if you think about it, reticence about this topic is strange. Unless you never love anyone, sooner or later you’re going to grieve. And even if you die so young that you’re the first to go, the people you love will grieve for you. A little preparation can make a big difference. For anyone grieving now or who will in this future, I hope this post will be part of that difference.

1. I love this not-quite verbatim quote from the movie Little Odessa:

When a boy is six he says, “My father knows everything.”
When he’s 12 he says, “My father knows almost everything.”
When he’s 16 he says, “My father is an idiot.”
When he’s 24 he says, “Maybe my father isn’t such an idiot.”
When he’s 40 he says, “I wish I could ask my father.”

2. I hope this doesn’t come across as any kind of blame for or disappointment in my parents. They were loving, supportive, wonderful people whose greatest joys were my sister and brother and me, and I wish I could thank them for everything they gave their children. I don’t think their reticence about discussing grief was in any way unusual then and I don’t think it is now, either—which is why I’m writing this post.

3. I actually had this experience, but the doctor in question failed to provide the warning, and yes, that made it even worse. He did give me a little valium beforehand, but learn from my mistake: when the doctor is going to give you valium and first asks if you get drunk easily, don’t be an idiot like I was and say, “I sure do, Doc, I’m God’s own lightweight!” Instead, the proper response is, “I don’t know because no matter how much I drink I’ve never managed to get even mildly drunk.” That way you at least have a chance of getting an effective dose, rather than the gerbil-appropriate one I received.

(Photo taken before the attempt to return the nose from whence it came)