Grief, and the Interior World

I lost my father just over two months ago. His passing wasn't unexpected given his advanced age and the Alzheimer's disease he'd been suffering from for at least two years. Any death is still a shock of sorts, even the most inevitable and natural. My experience of my father's death was complicated by our physical distance: I've lived in tropical Australia for over three years, which has presented its own set of challenges and difficulties regarding family, friends and connections thousands of miles and several time zones apart.

I learnt of his passing from my brother, at around 1.30am Australian Eastern Time. After the initial news, and the obviously fairly sleepless night, we texted a little. I then existed in an oddly quiet bubble for a week or so. It's not that my wife wasn't supportive and loving, far from it. It was that all the activity associated with someone's death and its immediate aftermath was occurring half a world away. Except for booking flights back to England, I had nothing to do. I worked a little, I went to the shops, I cycled a bit, but my father's death was something I didn't really own. Everything about it was going on without me. Was it perhaps just a horrible ruse on my family's part?

You'd think that might have been an ideal opportunity, free from the shackles of post-death duties, to get on with the grieving process; but no. There didn't yet feel like there was anything concrete to grieve. There was the conception that the man who had fathered me half a century ago, was no more. But I'd seen him once in three years and our phone calls had become more and more rare since his illness had worsened (my guilt surrounding this is another matter). It wasn't like I was visiting my dad every month or two, or chatting on the phone with him twice a week, as I'd done when I lived in the UK. There was no sudden change of circumstances, no physical space where he'd been. He still existed in my head, where he'd resided for the best part of three years. And on top of this, there was packing to consider, and preparing for the trials of a late-booked 34 hour journey of three flights.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I'm back in the Australian early Summer. The funeral was a humanist ceremony: Dignified, respectful and peppered with laughter. Stories and memories were shared, some of dad's favourite music was played, and at the wake he and my mother were remembered very fondly. I spent over a week sorting through the bungalow where he had lived for 23 years (12 with my mum until her death). I caught up a little with friends and family, despite a growing wish to cocoon myself. And then I steeled myself for another mammoth journey home.

I had expected, during that peculiar week before I flew back to England, to feel the full force of grief when I arrived there. "That's when it'll really hit me" became my mantra. Only I didn't. Still I appeared to resist The Proper Course of Things: The breaking down in tears, the crushing impact of loss, the sense of amputation. They eluded me when I first saw my brother; they eluded me when I first entered the empty house; they eluded me before, during and after the funeral, and they eluded me when I was gutting the house of the things which had made it a home for nearly a quarter of a century. I had my moments: Emptying the bag my brother had packed for dad's planned respite stay in the nursing home (which turned out to be his final ten days), I felt enormous sadness. It passed. I was so busy, had set myself goals (a room a day to sort into Things to Keep, Things to Donate and Things to Go) and - as is my character - became locked on target. In retrospect, clearing the house was a sobering experience and I'm sure it lowered my mood, even as it was quite satisfying to be completing a project (how much of that was due to my Asperger's, I couldn't say). But it wasn't 'Grief' grief.

The first week and a bit back home was pure jet lag. Probably the worst I've ever experienced. The second week was taken up with doing some house clearing of our own, and then working quite intensely. It's only very recently that I've been feeling textbook grief: variously emotional and numb, teary, sad, detached, seeking solitude, irritable, tired, aching, etc etc.

I know, in principle, that grief is a unique and flexible process. The Five Stages model is almost as outdated as Female Hysteria. That hasn't stopped me wanting to conform to what is expected when you lose a loved one. Does that expectation, though, emanate from outside in or inside out? Does Western society still have a pattern - a template of emotional response to trauma - behaviours anomalous to which are deemed odd, cold, repressed, histrionic, self-indulgent, weak? Or do many of us, in the face of loss, hold ourselves unreasonably to standards which are wholly unrealistic, given the individual nature of feeling?

Every relationship between someone bereaved and their lost loved one is different, even if they're siblings, partners, etc. No one reacts the same way to anything, good or bad, significant or trivial. Everyone has a distinctive interior landscape, weathered or nurtured each day by experiences and decisions of all magnitudes, and created according to character and temperament (which in turn are being minutely affected by daily living). As much as we value our individuality, most humans also take great solace from commonality, connection and fellow-feeling, particularly at times of great sorrow and distress. We want to feel like we're doing it 'right', as others do and have done, that we're going through something in a healthy and recognised way. We may crave solitude, but we want that to be a craving shared by most other humans in similar boats.

It's as important to recognise the need to conform in the face of adversity, not just from fear of being cast as The Other but also because it's comforting and stabilising, as it is to acknowledge that each of us will actually experience the process like no one else. That strange, quiet week following the news of my father's death; how I prepared for and behaved at his funeral; my efficient work clearing his house; how I felt about socialising with family and friends; my exceptional jet lag; and now the 'classic' symptoms of grief - they all have been part of the process, all necessary, all reflective of my personality, my situation and my relationship with my dad. And so it will continue.

Try not to be too hard on yourself at any time in life, but especially when circumstances conspire to do that for you.