On Grief (which changes)

Grief is turning two

Hello dear readers,

I’ve been looking through the archives to find out how our ancestors handled grief, wondering if it was more openly expressed than it is today. And then one thing led to another so this is a post about grief as the second anniversary of my Mum’s death approaches. I met a friend recently who told me that though forty-six years has passed since her mother’s death, the grief she feels is still raw. This came up in a conversation as I reflected on my own experience of grief since losing my mother two years ago and thinking about what has changed. A beautiful funeral I attended this week has also added to this pot pourri of thoughts on the subject.

In 2023 (when my grief was one) I described it as something you grow around. Now I can see that the shape of grief keeps changing. Threads are being spun like a yarn.

Here’s what I notice:

• I still feel anger, specifically when I recall Mum’s attending physician (not someone we had chosen) and the lack of empathy she showed to my family.

• When reminded that my mother is gone it no longer shocks me.

• I’m grateful I’ve had the opportunity to spend ‘time’ with my mother in the years since her death by writing and performing in a theatre production about her.

A month after Mum’s death, my family and I went to Scotland and stood on a dam overlooking a river where the salmon come home to spawn by cleverly hopping up a ‘ladder.’ As we stood there taking in the scene, my daughter exclaimed, “It’s hard to believe Grandma’s gone, and we are standing right here, enjoying this.”

At first I couldn’t speak. Every mention of Mum’s death felt like being reminded of an injustice. But I knew exactly what my daughter meant. “It’s ok,” I told her. “We can miss Grandma wherever we are. We carry her with us in our hearts wherever we go.” I find I often think of my Mum in mindful moments of noticing beauty; looking up to see clouds in a new pattern, parting gently like a mouth; lips open before a gentle kiss.

I discovered this passage recently:

“Our parents cast long shadows over our lives. When we grow up we imagine that we can walk into the sun, free of them. We don’t realise until it’s too late that we have no choice in the matter, they’re always ahead of us. We carry them within us all our lives, in the shape of our faces, the way we walk, the sound of our voice, our skin, our hair, our hands, our heart. We try all our lives to separate ourselves from them and only when they are dead do we find we are indivisible.

We grow to expect that our parents, like the weather, will always be with us. Then they go, leaving a mark like a handprint on glass or a soft kiss on a rainy day, and with their deaths we are no longer children”. - British Theatre director Richard Eyre

I think it’s important to notice those handprints and soft kisses wherever possible and not to push them into the recesses, particularly if we are busy. Working with family stories - much more a part of my life than they used to be while Mum was alive - makes me feel close to her. Though there was so much I didn’t ask her (during the years when she was lucid) I often find myself in silent conversation with her, asking “Is that what happened Mum? Is that the reason you did that?” At other times I marvel at her resolve and thank the kindness of long-gone relatives or schoolfriends on discovering obstacles that made her life difficult such as trying to obtain a passport without identity documents.

My two year old grief makes me want to reach out to other people who’ve lost loved ones. I’ve found that there are people who are open to this and people who are not. I recently shared a conversation with a friend who lost her mother many years ago. I knew her story because she wrote a wonderful food memoir and I interviewed her about her book for a book festival. Our conversation took place against the backdrop of an artist (chef) creating delectable artworks (a sushi banquet). It was impossible to find the laughter, tears and morsels remotely sad or ‘depressing’ as many people describe conversations about bereavement, grief or loss. It was a deeply satisfying conversation in a time when so many conversations are mere intersecting monologues as philosopher John O’Donohue suggests.

When had you last a great conversation, in which you overheard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew, that you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you’d thought you had lost, and a sense of an event of a conversation that brought the two of you onto a different plane, and then a conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterwards? - John O’Donohue, On Being

Last week I attended the funeral of an actor. I didn’t know him well, but I’d interviewed him some years ago and I felt a warm connection. After a rare illness, he spent the last eighteen years in a wheelchair. Eventually, and not without struggle, his eulogists told his friends, he came to accept his ‘new’ body. During the service, there was Shakespeare, prayer, a bit of ritual and wonderful stories. There was such an atmosphere of warmth, sadness and love that by the time I left the church I felt so, ‘held’.

Grief, it seems, grows more intricate with each passing year.

Memorial Card ©State Library of NSW