Prepping for grief

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Death in movies feels different these days. Maybe it’s a hospital scene, or the family gets a call or a visit from someone who shares the news with them. Then there’s the slow-motion breakdown of their faces and their bodies. The visible crushing of their hearts and limping of their spirits. These days, I imagine it, I feel each brow rumple, and each sucked in gasp. I can feel their heartbreak, and it causes me to breathe harder.

Photo by Ayomal Herath
How much time could you possibly spend with your loved ones for it not to hurt when they go? How do you reduce the seemingly dooming and inevitable time, when someone so dare to you, so much a part of your life and routine, simply ceases to exist? You can’t even hear their voice anymore, their
laughter… or see them move. The space of their existence, left unoccupied.

The shoes they used to wear, lacking their feet, the clothes would never be worn again by them, and their scent will slowly dissipate. You can’t even trap it in a bottle for later. All their jokes go with them, the space they take up in conversation... forever empty. The room they have taken in your mind, in your heart, widened and left alone.

Photo by Margaret Polinder on Unsplash
I know they say some cultures celebrate death, or rather, view it differently. But whether it be a young life or a mature one, the spaces we leave remain unchanged. Sure, the people who know us are the only testimonials of our lives, but they are also custodians and witnesses of the pain caused by the gaps we leave. They inhabit it, it becomes a part of their life, it shapes them so that they are made new, different from who they were before. Completely changed. The people in their lives know them as this, and the pain gets transferred.

How do you capture the source of this pain, the humanness of them, so we aren’t left wanting and hungry for a meal whose ingredients would never exist again, at least not in our lifetime?


What are your thoughts?

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