WHAT I’VE LEARNED ABOUT GRIEF (so far)
It’s undeniable that the human race is grieving. Even if you haven’t lost someone to Covid-19, our previous way of living has died. A certain innocence lost.
Memes about how doomed 2020 has been are multiplying almost as fast as the virus. For my community, the year has been too. Damn. Real.
Our incredible friend D passed away on Friday, February 7th 2020. She was 27.
I feel choked by writing about her in the past tense. Every moment of her life feels charged, each blink and giggle of hers is a monumental note in a symphony heaving with beauty. We are lucky that she showered us with love - there was no doubt that she led a good life, surrounded by great people. We are lucky that she loved to take pictures, looking coyly at the camera. We are lucky that she blessed us with her presence here upon the earth, however brief.
You learn to mourn, slowly, but always sadly, with each loved one lost. Your intuition grows, and you sense when time with someone is limited. The most essential thing is living each day like it’s their last.
Lesson 1: Acknowledge
…that we all feel guilt after death. I learned this with the passing of my grandmother - the immediate sense one gets after someone passes is remorse, and often guilt. The litany of family regrets came in upon her passing:
“I should have come to Kuwait to see her.”
”I could have called her more.”
”I wish I’d recorded her life story.”
That last one was me.
I immediately regretted not having documented her story - Salima Dawood was born in 1935 in Jerusalem and grew up amongst Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Her father was killed when she was very young, fighting in the Palestinian resistance.
She moved to Kuwait in the sixties. Her and my grandfather drove to Bulgaria from Kuwait for many summers, spent weekends on Failaka Island, and waited out the Gulf War in Baghdad trying to get papers to return to Kuwait. She worked at the Hungarian embassy, had memorized the Quran, and was the best Teta ever. I’d even had a microphone and SD card with plenty of memory ready to document her stories. I just never got around to it. And then she got sick, and sicker, and then she was gone.
Lesson 2: Make Time
…and record the memories, even if it’s just with your mind’s eye. You should never second-guess yourself when your instinct is to spend time with a loved one.
Should I go to the hospital? I asked myself when I learned D was getting an emergency surgery. Of course. I got in the car and set out on the first of many eerie drives to the apocalyptic-feeling hospital by Kuwait’s industrial port. Even when there was rush hour traffic and I only had 30 minutes between meetings, I would come to just glimpse her. To make another memory. I took pictures with my mind’s eye - the soft light filtering through the curtains, casting a pink halo around D’s ever-radiating beauty.
In my grandmother’s case, I made little drawings of her as she lay on the hospital cot. Would just lie in her bed whenever I could. I knew my mindset was morbid - I was planning for her death…but doing so helped me deal with the shock later on.
Lesson 3: It’s OK to Feel Helpless
There is nothing more excruciating than seeing the pain of a loved one. Especially when you can’t do anything about it.
“I helped the people helping her,” my good friend F said, when we shared our feelings of helplessness.
Even if you can’t do something like administer medicine or pay for a nurse, maybe you can order food, bring a good book, or access to an entertainment platform. Sit with the need to feel useful. Why is our self-worth so dependent on our utilitarian value? Aren’t the people who end up helping us the most usually the ones who just are there, listening? I started thinking about my time in hospitals as a time to be actively passive. Gentle, positive, and unobtrusive. Witnessing, holding space, but without the need to act or do.
Lesson 4: Grieve in Stages
…let yourself hurt. Otherwise, it will build and you’ll break down when you least expect it. With D, we were super lucky that we knew when time was running out. It was absolutely gut-wrenching to witness the complete catastrophic, absolutely undiscerning warpath that cancer goes on. The grief came in stages. The Diagnosis with a capital D. Witnessing the pure exhaustion of radiation and chemo. The shock that the disease had spread.
At every point, I found myself breaking down and crying. Never in front of her, usually alone. Sometimes with friends when we received bad news together. In the car leaving the hospital. Often I wouldn’t make it to the car, and would cry in the elevator. I didn’t try and hide it from the nurses, hospital staff, and other visitors.
“What?” my tears would ask…”Aren’t you human, too?”
I found that anger was part of my grieving process. It’s much easier to blame someone. The doctors and their late diagnosis. The shitty healthcare system. The Americans and their invasive medical techniques. Eventually though, that begins to poison you. You realize everyone is doing their best. And to stay healthy yourself, you need to let go of anger.
Lesson 5: It’s Not About You
D’s circle got smaller and smaller as her condition worsened. I believe that talking about your pain, intensifies it. Speaking about your problems makes them feel bigger. So, although it hurt that she stopped communicating as much, I told myself it wasn’t personal. It was her way of conserving energy.
As a general rule, not taking things personally makes life way easier.
In the case of terminal illness, it becomes absolutely imperative to avoid making it about you. When anyone close to D or Teta would get intense about claiming their space near her, I knew that the smartest thing was to back off.
Lesson 6: Respect the Different Ways We Grieve
Some of us need to talk. Others need silence. Others need company. And yet others need to be alone. Some of us stay super busy. Some of us get completely paralyzed. Denial can be comforting to some, and maddening to others. Some want to go online and memorialize their loved one the moment they are gone. Others want to wait. And some people find public grieving to be distasteful on the whole. In my case…I felt all of these things!
The dizzying gamut of emotions is completely normal.
There is no “right” way to grieve. Don’t judge anyone else’s process, or your own. It’s ok if you don’t cry or can’t stop crying. Just. Feel. It. Trust me.
Repressing your emotions will make them manifest in different ways - a horrendous email to an undeserving colleague, snapping at a toddler, etc. Just feel your feelings and let people know you’re grieving. It’s fine to even set an away message on your email inbox. This is as important as it gets in terms of life stuff. Give it the gravitas it deserves.
Lesson 7: Be Patient With Yourself
…and ask other people to be patient with you. It took me almost two months to write this. It will take many many months for me to feel like it’s real. Like D is not coming back, with all her glorious light and laughter. That Teta won’t hear me out and support me unconditionally when I make my next big life decision.
Lesson 8: Be Aware
…When you’re truly sad, vs. when you’re making yourself sad. I teared up writing Lesson 7, but they were tears of self-pity, not tears of mourning. Know the difference.
Going through old photos can feel nice when you miss a loved one lost. But it shouldn’t be a regular Sunday morning activity that cripples you for the rest of the day/week.
Sadness can be addictive. Don’t do it. Your loved one wouldn’t want that for you.
Lesson 9: Find Joy
…in their memory. Find a way to productively channel your loved one, a way to truly make their time on earth SING! In my case, I dedicate a lot of my yoga and movement practice to D, who was an incredible flow artist. On the days I channel her, there’s an extra smoothness in my body, an o0omph in my motions. This morning a bougainvillea (majnooneh) blossom landed in my lap. It felt like her energy was bringing me on of her favorite flowers. And I smiled.
Lesson 10: Reach Out to a Professional
At some point I felt way out of my depth. At a friend’s suggestion, I reached out to a doula who provides end-of-life services. It was such a relief to have an objective outsider give us suggestions - to make an album of her photos for her to look at…to allot time for each person to have one-on-one time with D…and so on. I will be eternally grateful to Nina Haley for offering a slice of sanity at that time.
And finally. There’s a ton of stuff I still don’t understand.
….Like, is there any way to prepare for a sudden death? How can you unpack a quick, senseless death and make sense of it somehow? How do we help children grieve? And so on. Would love to hear your thoughts! Thank you for reading <3