Grief Matters

There are a lot of rarely-spoken assumptions about the proper way to grieve for a loved one. I’m not going to detail them here, there are too many to count and I don’t know what they all are because…well, we rarely speak of them. We keep quiet, in case our ideas are foolish or overly sentimental, or pointless. Yet oftentimes we are burdened by the rituals we wish we’d carried out. A trinket placed in the coffin, something said at a viewing, a visit paid to a grave side, last words before a loved one passes. Things we wish we’d done, but we were too embarrassed, shamed by others or ourselves.

I think it’s more difficult for the highly rational mind to let itself give way to irrational desires during grief. We know the deceased doesn’t see the gift, hear the words, know if we visit the grave enough, so it shouldn’t matter. That sort of expression does nothing for the deceased, it’s all about the mourner! That doesn’t make the act unnecessary. In fact, it might even make it more so.

After the vet had given Prada her injection of lethal anesthetics, after Prada had gone limp in my arms she left us sitting with her, saying to come out and tell us when we were ready for them to take Prada for the post mortem. She told us to take as long as we needed. I don’t remember how long we sat with Prada, if we talked or cried or reminisced. I remember at some point Derek and Erin left me alone with Prada. As much as they loved her, she was my partner and they knew she would always mean more to me. After all, she’d saved my life on more than one occasion. When we were alone I scooped Prada up in my arms and buried my face in her fur and cried. Prada wasn’t much of a snuggler; she didn’t like being held when she was alive. Holding her that last time was very different; she didn’t squirm or huff indignantly. She felt like one of those large stuffed animals, stiff with seams holding her shape, but no tension in her head or legs.

I kept thinking to myself that at some point I had to let her go, put her down, and walk out of that exam room, but every time the thought got that far it stopped. If there was one thing Prada hated above all else, except possibly bath time, it was being shut in a room alone. I couldn’t leave her alone now. She wasn’t alive, she wouldn’t miss me or feel abandoned, but still I couldn’t leave her alone. I knew that thought was irrational and entirely driven by emotion. I was aware of that every time the phrase “I can’t leave her alone” crossed my mind. Many times I solved to just put her down, get up, and walk out. But as I started to calm down, as the periods between fur-choked sobs grew longer, I asked myself the following very important question.

“If it would make me feel better on this awful day, does it really matter if leaving her alone doesn’t do anything for her?”

Grief rituals like this, however irrational, however small and apparently meaningless, cross our minds for a reason. Oftentimes the gesture provides a sense of finality, if the death comes too fast, unexpectedly, or If we feel we have “unfinished business” with the deceased. One final act of love or honour, such as a gun salute or a eulogy allows us to take some control over this tragedy which has taken place out of our hands, even against our best efforts. If you need to pet your dead cat one last time, put a six pack of your dad’s favourite beer on his grave, scatter bits of a shredded up journal over the ocean waves as a romantic promise to never allow her secrets to be revealed, I encourage you to do it, because if you don’t, you will remember that you didn’t do that thing for the rest of your life, and it will matter to you.

I opened the exam room door and asked Erin to tell the vet to come get Prada while I was in the room, because I couldn’t leave her alone. No one laughed at me, nobody patronized me for needing such a sentimental gesture to find closure, and I don’t think back on that moment with crimson ears, wishing I hadn’t been so childish. In fact, it’s the moment I remember most clearly from that night, watching a vet tech come in and lift Prada very gently into his arms, as if she were just asleep, and carry her out. Knowing that I hadn’t left her alone for a moment during the most painful days of her too-short life, was the symbol that I needed to remind me throughout the rest of my life that I had been as good a partner to her as she had to me. I have my symbolic memory, and I cherish it.

There is a rational reason for our irrational gestures of affection that mean nothing to dead, unfeeling loved ones but mean everything to us. These gestures tell us something about ourselves, give us substantive, specific memories to assure ourselves of our part in the relationship. Even beyond buried emotions, held grudges, unsettled feuds, withheld forgiveness, regretted words and actions, or rejection, at some point, you loved him, or her. That love, and the memory of it, is far more important than whatever pain came later. Love is a physical force, as real as gravity or the London Dispersion Force, worked into the very fabric of the universe by a God who defines Himself by that concept. It’s a healing mechanism built right into our minds. Don’t fight it, and don’t shame yourself into silencing it.

That which goes unspoken often becomes unspeakable – Adrian Rich