Grief Work
This Grief Thing Preston 2018 photo by Fevered Sleep
And those times when they collide: work and life (as if they weren’t colliding all the time in any case). When they collide, careening into one another, some sort of explosive emotional car crash that brings the whole plan to a halt at the same time as giving it a whole new walloping wave of momentum.
So here we are: working on a new project about grief. Well, not “about” grief, as such, more “for” grief, or “from” it, or “towards” it, or “with” it.
A project that tries to make spaces for grief. That tries to speak to that great wall of silence. That wall of ignoring and denial. That wall of “life goes on” and “you’ll get through it” and “I’m sorry for your loss” and “in deepest sympathy” and all those other euphemistic platitudes and embarrassments and please don’t cry because I’ll panic if you do and frankly you’re making me feel bad enough as it is with your trembling voice and your stifling silence and your death death death death death. And all the lovely cards with the lilies and the clouds with the rays of light bursting through.
And my heart bursting through my chest and the whole inner life of me spewed up here on the street for all of you to see (walking along Lower Clapton Road in London, on the phone to my boyfriend, and the snivelling spectacle of a 47 year old man loudly sobbing in the snow. As if the snow wasn’t bad enough without all that as well).
And all the business to do. All that administration. Where’s the subsidy for all this emotional labour of tidying up the mess left by your death? Shall we have the watercress salad or the coleslaw after we’ve seen you into the ground? No you can’t speak to the account holder, you really can’t, because she’s dead dead dead dead dead. Don’t come off script like that and speak to me as a human to a human for the first time today, in this twelfth phone call I’ve made today, because when you hear me as a human and not as a customer, and you wish me well like that, I repay your kindness and your empathy with great gasping sobs down the phone and then you’re embarrassed and I’m guilty and I have to hang up on you and I wanted to say thankyou like I’d said to the person who had the empathy of a stone.
Except stones have become strangely comforting, with their lies of permanence and their quiet companionship, and their endless capacity for listening to me cry.
We need to talk about grief. Why does it have to be this hard? We need to talk about grief. Why are you apologising “for my loss”? We need to talk about grief. Why are my tears an affront to you?
I’m grieving.
And I want us to talk about it.