The Nature of Grief

A little while ago I went to a funeral. The person who died hadn't been a major part of my life for a long time, although his ex-wife and children were, and he had recently gotten close to my mom again - a friendship that both of them had to give up for the usual ridiculous reasons. It was hard. It was hard because of my memories, it was hard because he was someone so completely loved by the community and by his family - everyone knew him and had their own memories, and he remembered everyone. It's what made him such a phenomenal car salesman. It was hard because he isn't that much older than my own parents and I had to fight to contemplate the reality that someday they will leave me.

As I'm sitting there, I watched his daughters standing in the reception line. The oldest is out on her own, living in London of all places. This was not the occasion I next expected to see her. She was the picture of grace and poise - she never cried, she never lost it, she smiled at ever person, listened to every explanation of how they knew her dad, how great he was and what he had done for them. She listened to their grieving and she gave them comfort.

The youngest was another story. It was easy to see how hard it was for her - even though there were extenuating circumstances involving a healing broken leg, that was not the reason for her distress. Her tears came at regular intervals, and most of the time she could only shake someone's hand because words failed her. In that case, much of the time people were comforting her. They were watching a heartbroken daughter grieve, mostly unable to help her because they were so lost in their own.

I started to feel guilty.

I've been through plenty of loss and been intimately involved in funerals before in my life, and in all that time there was something that I never really realized. Funerals are not really for those who have truly lost - they are not for the sons and daughters or brothers and sisters or spouses and partners. Funerals are where everyone else has the chance to grieve, where everyone else says "hey, look at me, I'm sad because this person is gone" and they expect the people with the most burden, the most sadness, and the most loss to make them feel better. We are truly a self-centered type of being that we want the people who probably mattered most to tell us that we mattered. It is after this torturous ideal that they get their chance to truly grieve. That they are alone or with the few others that made up that person's world, and they get to really let go and experience the grief they have been holding back just so they could be a rock for everyone else.

After that, I did my best not to cry. I did my best not to feel sad for myself. It didn't work as well as I had hoped, but I made sure I didn't cry when I talked to his daughters again, and when I talked to his girlfriend. They had already had enough of other people's tears and it just wasn't fair of me to burden them with that.

The next time someone in my life passes, and they surely will because that is just the nature of existence, I wonder if I will see it differently because of this. I wonder if I could go back, if I would be able to help the people who needed it in a way I couldn't then. I will never know, and maybe I don't want to. I can only hope to be stronger for others in the future.