All cultures and creeds practice rituals to mark the ending of life. Some make a very public display of anguish and grief, parading through the streets wailing and beating their breasts; others - as has recently been reported in the British press - believe that open air funeral pyres are crucial to the release of the spirit; whilst others have the option of burial or cremation which may, or may not, include a religious service.
Whatever your choice of ceremony, one of the most shocking aspects is the sense of spiritual emptiness you feel afterwards. Everything in you has been working towards this moment, to such an extent that it has emptied your mind of everything else. This, of course, is one of the purposes of such rites of passage. They help us through the initial stages of shock and grief.
YOUR SENSE OF LOSS INTENSIFIES
But they do little to prepare us for what is to come. In the busyness of choosing music, poems, someone to give an address, we've given no thought for what comes afterwards. The empty house to which we must return; the silent telephone; the clicking clock; the desolation. These are the elements of someone else's life; nothing to do with me!
The intensity of pain in discovering that this funeral service is not the end, but the beginning, is all-but overwhelming. The rest of your life yawns before you. There is no end to its emptiness, its anguish, until death - in kindness - takes you, too. Loneliness and loss are your hated companions - enemies, but impossible to expunge.
DEALING WITH LOSS AND GRIEF
In this forlorn, alien landscape, emotions go haywire. The tears we have bravely contained in the immediate aftermath of our loss, now spill from our eyes with a terrifying frequency and passion. Noisy, gulping sobs may accompany them when we least expect it. People's kindness becomes something to avoid. Alternatively, we may experience the sort of hysteria experienced by the characters in the novel I wrote following the death of my daughter.
"We have been travelling in a southerly direction, down from the moor towards the coast, on a road I'm not familiar with. On each side, the short, cropped pasture of the verges gives way to wiry moor-land grasses bent low by the incessant wind that moans and whines, unfettered, from the open sea. Gorse bushes, a vibrant yellow in full flower, offer little shelter. And among them, heads down, endlessly grazing, are the sheep that roam these parts, summer and winter.
The hearse, ahead, comes to a halt. A tractor blocks the road. We wait for some minutes with the engine idling.
'We're going to be late,' says Rosie, consulting her watch. Our slot at the Crematorium is booked for three o'clock.
I feel the tension building in my neck and shoulders. I clasp my hands together, and stare, resolutely, out of the window. When it becomes apparent that we shall be going nowhere for a while, Steve switches off the engine and gets out of the car to investigate. The wind flattens his hair to his head and sends his tie on a wild upward flight for freedom. He returns a moment later.
'Looks like someone's collided with a sheep in the middle of the road, and the farmer's come to remove the body.'
I begin to laugh. Rosie turns in her seat.
'Don't you see,' I gasp, unable to contain myself, 'this is exactly what Katya's life was like. She was late for everything. And she always had some weird and wonderful excuse to explain why. She would have revelled in telling this story. Couldn't even make it on time for my own funeral, she'd have said. Sheep on road.'
I can barely deliver the punch line I am laughing so much and, as I finish, Rosie, too, explodes with mirth. It is infectious: a silly school-girlish reaction that has the two of us convulsed. There might, I admit, be an element of hysteria about it. But I feel the laughter as one would the shock of plunging into a pool after the burning heat of a Mediterranean sun: as something joyful. Fortifying and invigorating.
While the tractor goes about its gory business, and the hearse stands sedately on the road ahead, Steve's car rocks with the sound of Rosie's and my laughter. It is a sound of pure exhilaration. And in the face of something beyond their comprehension, the two men look on helplessly."
THE FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF
The eruption of emotion in these two women may seem inappropriate - even embarrassing - but there is an honesty about it that relieves the tensions of dealing with loss and grief. This may not be the experience of everyone, of course. As the authors of The Grief Recovery Handbook (HarperCollins, 1998) are at pains to explain:
"no study has ever established that stages of grief actually exist, and what are defined as such can't be called stages. Grief is the normal and natural emotional response to loss.... No matter how much people want to create simple, bullet-point guidelines for the human emotions of grief, there are no stages of grief that fit any two people or relationships."
That may be. But the point, surely, is that in identifying patterns in grief, we find solace in knowing that we are not alone. What I experience may not be exactly what you encounter, but if I can be convinced that it is not outside the normal range of emotions, that is comfort enough, in itself. Let's not add to the burden of loss and spiritual emptiness by denying the bereaved a sense of identifying with others in the same situation; a sense of belonging to a community defined by its suffering.
c Mel Menzies, 2008-2009
Author of A Painful Post Mortem, a contemporary story of love and loss.
BUY MEL'S BOOKS at http://www.melmenzies.co.uk/books/
ALL PROCEEDS FOR CHARITIES BENEFITING CHILDREN
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