On Grief
It all started as an inane conversation with Alex and Mookie (names changed) one afternoon at work. We started talking grieving about our portfolio losses, and how the market crash had destroyed value. Alex begins by saying he has got his retirement all planned out. He states that he has even picked out where he wants to be buried and he has had conversations with his family on what to do if he became a vegetable or died. Mookie, a millennial chimes in saying he felt odd recently when his parents sat him and his brother down and discussed all their finances with him. I make small talk out of the fact that burials and funerals have become a big racket in the USA and why it matters so much where you are buried. Mookie responds and states you know B, it helps the family grieve. I quip — “Right! Explains why folks go on a vacation or go to Vegas right after a funeral”.
It started me thinking about what is grief and why we grieve? Is our grief our internal manifestation of the separation that has occurred? Our relationships or lack thereof govern our lives more than we realize. When a loved one dies we feel a vacuum in our lives which we don’t know how to mend. Is grief our mechanism for reconciling the permanent change that has occurred? Is grieving an act of self pity by which we comfort our egos and overcome our sadness. Strangely, we seldom talk about these things or are taught how to deal with our emotions. I don’t recall a class in school where we discuss how we should cope with challenges that life throws in front of us. You would think educating us on life and living would be paramount in our education and upbringing. But clearly there is a big gap.
I remember my first encounter with death when I was 6 years old. My great grandfather passed away. I remembered him distinctly as he would walk to our place in the evening and have “sweet milk pudding” (Paal Pongal) that my mom made. When he died there was a huge family gathering and there were lots of people crying, or so I think for my memory is weak on that aspect. But I remember meeting a lot of people and having a good family time. I was too young to experience grief.
Fast forward a few more years and a few more deaths in the family. I don’t recollect grieving for I was young just accepted that someone passed. Perhaps my relationships at that young age were shallow. The first time I remember being impacted was when I was in college when I heard Johnny mama (uncle) passed away. A friend of the family who had been close to a lot of us. He was young and had a heart condition since birth. But I distinctly remember feeling sad upon hearing of his passing. The thought of not being able to see him or speak with him again was overwhelming. That was my first real encounter with grief. It’s that finality that death brings to a relationship moving it from a physical interaction into one that we can only relive in our memories that is hard for us to accept . What if our memories are poor or we don’t know how to recall someone when we want to. That feeling of sadness is in some way a manifestation of this permanent change in one of our real human interactions.
Reflecting back now, it feels as though the grief is more than just the sadness of separation. For sadness is just a momentary thought that will be replaced by another that comes rolling behind. Maybe there is some disappointment due to an unfinished relationship that played an important role in our life. The jokes we exchanged, the rich conversations that we had, the sound of their voice or their gestures the pat on the back they gave you in your every interaction. Its only when you face separation that you realize you must move on without that person in your life. It feels as though a part of you has been torn away and now you need to grow to rebuild, i.e., become whole again. Your investment in that relationship has just been stolen away from you. We all get so dependent on our relationships that our life seems meaningless even when a small piece is torn away from us.
When we grieve we are essentially asking the world, why? In the chaos that is life there are no explanations that can satisfy us. Some of us cry in our helplessness, others amongst us get depressed and forlorn. We want to find answers to our questions. But sadly there are none. We just have to learn to grow again and mend our permanent wound. Philosophers would say the only way out of this quagmire is to be detached from all living things, accepting the oneness of all. Unity in the diversity, nothing lost nothing gained, just transformed. The departed soul moves on continuing its journey. We all start at different places and have to get separated at sometime. When we grieve we are seeking that attachment that is never going to be. The quicker we realize it the grief will dissolve and be replaced by sweet memories of the good times we have had.
