Mourning Becomes Impossible

There's no mourning anymore. That's just a fact. In Jane Austin novels it's six months in black and six months in violet. In my youth it was six months in black for the women and armbands for the men. But I don't know what it is now. It's a few days, if anything. Everybody wears black so much anyway: look into any hairdressing salon - they look like everyone belonged to them just died. And you didn't call to the house in my youth, unless specifically to make a mourning call. The bereaved were still invited to weddings and so forth, but were expected to decline. People left them alone, and that was o.k.

Now no-one leaves anyone alone.

I'm bereaved and I don't want to meet anyone. Your loved one dies and at first you're busy making sandwiches and answering the phone, then you're busy replying to messages and thanking people, then you're busy clearing up and paying people, but there comes a day when you're not busy anymore. Then you just want to sit in your house and look out the window.

It's very much frowned on, I know, and I get told I cant let myself go and I need to seek closure (whatever that is) and I should 'get out there' and so on. I get told this by people who are afraid all this sitting and looking will end in depression. They love me and they don't want that to happen. But they truly don't understand the difference between me and them. They have no religion. They don't understand what I'm doing when I'm just sitting....I'm letting God explain to be why my loved one had to die, why all my loved ones will die, why I will die.

It takes time to talk to God. It's not done in a prayer - it's started, but not done. No, God picks up the conversation sometimes ages later, when I'm just sitting and looking out the window. I cant speed that along. I wait for God. And I reckon that's what mourning is about, allowing people the time and space to talk to God and then feel the answers as they come slowly and whisperingly.

But the world wont wait for that. The world doesn't understand that vocabulary anymore, so we have short cuts - supposed short cuts - to the mysterious 'closure'. Counsellors and anti-depressants - sign up for a life time's addiction, but don't have a sad face at work and don't hide in your home (although your home is supposed to be your safe place to hide).

I wont go for that. This is too important to me. I'm going to mourn in the old fashioned way.

A Happy Death

My dear sister tried many times to talk to me about her impending death. Educated by a lifetime of soap operas I knew the right thing to do was refuse to hear - there would be no negative talk, no sad pauses, no acknowledgement of reality. So every time I visited was like a birthday: I had presents, gossip, music, fun. I would keep on and on until I made her laugh. On her behalf I refused to accept death. It must have been so trying for her.

Because, really, what business of mine was it? She was succumbing to a most terrible cancer, buying precious weeks with aggressive treatments that made the days won too painful to bear. What right had I to censor her attitude?

Of course, I wasn't the only one. the whole family was at it - being positive. Positive of what? Mainly, I think, we were scared stiff. Death had stalked into the middle of our village and was carrying off the fair maiden. And we couldn't do a thing about it.

Finally, when she wanted to get some business done she made me sit down and listen. I was to have a treasured possession of hers after her death - WHICH WOULD BE SOON. No, no, I cried, but at that stage she didn't have the time to waste indulging me. It would be soon and she had things to do in preparation. She arranged her will and her funeral in the kindly and efficient way she had lived her life. As I knelt by her coffin I was still saying 'no', in the selfish and inefficient way I have lived my life. I know she's in Heaven, or going there very soon. I know she forgives me, because she always did. I miss her very much, and I'm so sorry I could not contribute to her happy death.