Allow me to start with a definition. The etymology of “bereave” lays bare the brutality of loss itself.
bereave (v.) Middle English bireven, from Old English bereafian “to deprive of, take away by violence, seize, rob.” Since mid-17c., mostly in reference to life, hope, loved ones, and other immaterial possessions.
Anyone who finds themselves in this place has suffered violence of the spirit. But we don’t treat all deaths as equally traumatic.
I have found myself angry during the times when I felt that the people around me were asking me to cower in the shadows to spare them the discomfort of my pain. The times when someone went out of their way to ask me about how I was coping, but they only wanted a chipper answer of no more than two sentences and disapprovingly reacted when that is not what I gave them. The times when people avoided me (sometimes physically dodging like cartoon characters) because they could not handle the possibility of being met with my grief.
To be clear, whenever possible, I have opted to not put myself in a public or social circumstances when I am at my worst. I understand the importance of retreat at times while I ride out the upwelling. However, I have to go to work, because I can’t take months of leave, paid or unpaid. I have to attend certain events, because my future self will regret not engaging with the people I still have and care about. I have to walk out into the sunlight because she loved the sun. I wish it were a societal norm to wear a physical mark of mourning, because I want the world to subtly know that however I seem, however I act, there is a wound under the surface that hurts all the time.
And so I want to unequivocally state here, on this space on the internet I’ve carved, that it is not the job of the bereaved to make the rest of the world less uncomfortable. Grief is pain. It is messy. It is unpredictable. And grief is countless times harder to bear if we’re asked to hide it away. Grief is also the desire in one moment to not mention who we lost and in the next moment, a profound need to tell someone, anyone, about them. Telling stories of my sister still makes me cry, but if I can’t tell them, then no one knows her, and that’s worse.
The people who will sit through the discomfort of watching my eyes fill with tears as I try to finish a sentence before looking away to collect myself enough to speak, those are the people who have made each day more survivable.
I cannot worry about how you feel right now. You may feel as uncomfortable as you wish, and I apologize for that feeling I may cause. But if you’re up to it and willing to lean into the discomfort, that gift you give me is so much more valuable than you know.
Unmoored Sister 