In
a rather miraculous way, I have charted a path through life that has been
remarkably untouched by grief. I am in my early forties, so have experienced
the loss of all my grandparents, and one work colleague was killed in a car accident
ten years ago. Apart from that, I have lived quite a charmed life.
My
parents are both well and physically fit in their mid-seventies, and whilst I
have thought about the crippling grief that the loss of a parent will involve,
I have been quite the emotional cripple and not spent time looking at it face
on.
This
summer, one quiet Sunday afternoon, my wife walked down the garden in tears to
tell me that my best friend had died suddenly in his sleep. He was forty-two,
cycled many miles each week, played five-a-side football and had a better diet
than me. Here was grief, fresh and brutal, with no warning at all.
My
wife and I went through the process of saying goodbye to my best friend
together – he was, after all, a best friend of hers as well. We booked a
strange hotel, agonised over which funeral clothes still fitted, made the
terribly difficult phone call to his father, and travelled to the north for the
service. In the absence of a sibling I gave a speech at the funeral. All too
quickly, we were back on the train to London and he had physically vanished
from our lives.
I
found it odd, and my wife noticed, that I appeared not to grieve. She was
worried. At what point, she asked, was the explosion of grief going to happen,
and how much clearing up was going to be needed when it did?
It
began thinking about grief, its many forms, and how we all cope differently
with the events leading up to and closing the death of a loved one.
I
came to the conclusion that I am what I might term an alcohol griever. In
traditional English male fashion, I bury my grief deeply (just about every
internet article tells me that this is NOT the thing to do) and it bubbles to
the surface in unguarded moments, lubricated by Pale Ale or Rioja. There is a
brief, maudlin and uncomfortable ten minutes and then the emotion moves on, as
my corrupted senses move to the next room in my head, and I find myself empty
and in need of nostalgia.
Will
I ever grieve properly? I doubt it. What worries me is that I might appear somehow
heartless for this way of carrying on. I really am not. I miss my best friend
terribly and think about him every day. I often check my instant messenger and
read the last thing he typed to me. But as far as public shows of emotion go, I
doubt that there will be any, and there definitely won’t be a gut-spilling on
social media.
I
thought about how others grieve. I think that the way we say goodbye to people
works rather badly.
There
is an awkwardness in Christian ceremonies because in most cases many of the
mourners do not believe in the Christian promise of resurrection. Even in a
very believing community, the hit-rate of cast-iron believers isn’t going to be
more than eighty percent. What that means is for all the hope and joy of
returning to God, there will be a fifth of people keeping quiet, doubting it
all, and despairing quite a lot at the helplessness of the situation. That’s
where you are going to get real emotion, genuine grief, and sadness.
There
is also the uncomfortable feeling that many who claim to be believers have only
come back into a church because it is The Right Thing To Do, and haven’t been
to church on a Sunday for many years.
And
there are the others who don’t know the words to the hymns, are intimidated by
the ceremony, and wish that there was a chance to play a Robbie Williams track.
The
flip side, which is the case for the majority in the UK, is a secular service
in a crematorium. It is shorn of many of the traditions of the Christian way of
doing things, which people have been used to for a thousand years, and what is
left is a strange amalgam of different practices. We have music, but it is
often something that the family of the deceased thought he or she would like.
We have speeches, bravely made by family and friends, none of whom are
experienced in public speaking. Rather like a children’s school play, the
audience is not going to grumble and goodwill carries them through. And then
there in The Poem. If all else, when my time comes, please spare the mourners
The Poem. It is lovingly crafted, usually by someone who is writing poetry for
the first time since he or she was in a Junior School. It has painful rhyming
couplets (because it always has to rhyme) and contains syrupy observations
meant for the only person that cannot hear them. Also, there is no good rhyme
for the word ‘football’.
So
with a hotch-potch of different little tributes, we are sent on our way, and in
the UK that means a button pressed, the closing of the curtain, and a tinny
reproduction of ‘My Way’. How can that help anyone come to terms with the loss
of someone dear to them?
I
feel that the process of grieving in the UK is somewhat out of kilter. It
doesn’t help people who want to come to terms with loss.
I
think what actually happens is we don’t have the opportunity to grieve properly
for those we love, so we head to the media for a suitable replacement activity.
Newspapers are still sold on the back of the emotion surrounding the death of
Diana, Princess of Wales. When any footballer dies, there are black armbands at
every fixture and a minute’s silence before every game. Is any of this emotion
genuine, or are people just using the event of a famous death to transfer
private grief?
How
touched are we really, for example, by the death of a 1970s celebrity, and how
many of us are scared to say that we really don’t care that much, because we
fear a social media backlash from the Emotional Police?
The
passing of David Bowie was a good example. I am sure that for his family, his
loss is awful, just as it would be for any of us. By all accounts he was a
marvellous husband, father and friend. But what I fear happened was that the
journalists who produce much of the content we read (many of whom were
teenagers in the 70s) saw it as a great opportunity for a public mourning. I
have no problem with that as it is, but I don’t think everybody should be
obliged to join in. What if you didn’t like Bowie’s music? Were you obliged, as
everyone else was, to post that poignant lyric, just to seem normal? It’s not
normal. It’s ghoulish.
The
internet has spawned a lot of this, which is a digital extension of the ‘Happy
40th Birthday, Mike!’ signs you used to see posted on roundabouts in
the 1980s. (Remember them?) It is a sign that people need to be seen to be
feeling something, and everyone else has to know about it. An emotion is not
real and validated unless everyone else can see it.
Are
we really that emotionally immature?
I
return to my own emotional constipation. I did do a couple of things to express
my grief, and to attempt to help others see how much my dear friend meant. I
bought a football shirt, and told only my wife, two old college friends and my
friend’s sons the significance of the choice of colour. It was a private and
closed expression of loss.
I
also wrote to his father and his wife. The cards didn’t make much sense, but I
hope they helped them a little.
And
finally, in a few quiet moments, I shared stories with my wife about our three
way shared past. We laughed and were sad.
None
of it was shared on Facebook. My friend would have appreciated that.
