Death is in the air this week. A close friend’s mom died. Her wake and funeral are this week. Peter is in Ontario for funeral proceedings and friend supporting too. His good friend’s mom died after a very long illness.
Both of these moms were sick. Death was “expected” in some near-term. Their deaths could be considered a blessing. Still, it’s confronting, especially for our friends who have each lost their last living parent.
My own parents will die someday. I think about it more than they would ever know. I think about it when we are spending time together. I think about it when we are not spending (enough) time together. I think too about the quality of those times. Is it vulnerable and connecting or routine and transactional? My preference is usually the former, though we often struggle to get there.
Last week Peter renounced his US citizen ship at the US Consulate in Halifax. He was not allowed to bring in his phone. This seemed to make him nervous, and by emotional contagion, me too. We kissed goodbye and I set off to wander the streets, knowing that he’d call as soon as he got back to the car and his phone. I was about two minutes into my freedom when I started thinking “This is what it would be like if he died”. I’d be excited to tell him I’d just decided I would visit the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia but he would never text back. He’d never come meet me there.
You might not have seen that coming.
I spend a fair bit of time anticipating grief—like a hedge against future sadness. Maybe if I just feel a bit sad all the time, loss won’t crush me when it comes. This makes me think of advice from a great therapist when I was having a tough emotional time during fertility treatment. She said that it was not because I hoped more that I would be more disappointed later.
In other words: Hope now. Be disappointed later if that is what comes. I can make this work for grief too: Love fully now. Lots of time for grief later. Ideally I will love myself more fully too, especially those sad, scared, bracing parts of me that work overtime.
Death is always in the air. It would be nice to drop the need to hedge against it so often