Newspaper Obituaries and the Duality of Grief
I cannot remember what month it was that I saw the newspaper obituary, but I think the year was 2009. Why I still remember that very obituary, I do not know. How I began to even read obituaries, I cannot recall. But death is a powerful event, so “forgetting and moving on” is not an issue I contemplate an ultimatum for, not pragmatically. This is because, in the words of Gregory House (House MD), “Dying changes everything.”
This woman had been in her thirties (I remember because I had subtracted her date of passing from her date of birth when I saw the obituary). She died either at childbirth or afterwards (I inferred from her husband’s personal message). He had posted the obituary in The Punch and included a personal message- about their having waited for so long for their bundle of joy, only for death to pounce when they finally had their baby, about how shattered he was.
The vision of that obituary page is etched in my mind, in this quiet place of acknowledgment and reckoning, in a mental space where it just exists. For the longest time after the first time I saw it, I could think of nothing else. Now, however, over a decade after, it is not as stinging as it was the first time. But it has not completely disappeared either.
I remember the lady’s bright smile, dark skin, coiffed hair, and blue blouse, albeit now vaguely. I remember how heartbroken I felt to think about the colossal pain her loved ones would feel. I remember wondering about her. The memory lingered.
When I realized how deeply affected I became because I read these newspaper obituaries, I started to avoid them. But some deaths were difficult to grapple, especially when I read the personal messages of the bereaved. A father who lost his entire family in a fatal plane crash. A mother who lost her son in his prime. A wife who lost her husband in his youth. I would think about the deceased people, wonder if their loved ones had come to terms with such deaths. I started to question, “Why love only to lose?”
Then, quite recently, I lost a person who had been an intricate part of my support system, a person who had committed to helping me in my moments of lowliness, a person who is irreplaceable. It was too sudden, too shocking, too rude. It felt like death was mocking me. No, it is not a fair game if you take out the person who is a million in one (pun intended). But it happened, and now, I am not even sure I want to ponder death any further. There are too many complexities.
I feel deeply about loss. Perhaps too deeply, given my history of heart-wrenching sorrow after reading obituaries of people I never met or knew. I end up wondering how the now-deceased person felt to watch life seep from them, if they died a painful, slow death because sickness ravaged their body. I wonder about their alarm at the inevitability of an impending accident or plane crash. I wonder if they knew they would not wake up the next morning. I wonder how their loved ones would cope. I wonder about how we all move on from loss. Ironically, I would also feel a tinge of guilt about my forgetfulness.
When I noticed that I did not feel as deeply about the loss of the young woman in the obituary from 2009 anymore, I wondered if that made me less humane. Less feeling. Less sympathetic. But the truth is that each reality of death is jarring. It is new all over again. The suddenness, the shock, the rudeness. And the grief. A lot of the grief.
Grief is your friend in the dark. In my tribe, it is the norm for people to rally round you while you mourn your dead. They mourn with you. They comfort you. They support you. But they also leave you. They leave you to “move on”. But grief, it moves with you. It calls dibs on the front seat- or the back seat, if you succeed in repressing it- of the vehicle that is called your mind and moves with you.
Since suffering this particular loss, I have cried where no one was watching, in the middle of my day. Teared up at the sight of WhatsApp chats I had with them. Sighed deeply at the sight of a memento that reminded me of them. And this not because I did not mourn initially, and frantically. This not because I did not wail with gut-wrenching sorrow upon hearing the news of their demise. This not because I did not grieve before. But this sort of grief, it just gnaws at you, popping up occasionally and unexpectedly, shocking you each time.
Physiologically, scars form after a wound has healed. Scars, therefore, are signs of healing. But like double-edged swords, scars are reminders of pain which once was. But should a scar also be a sharpener of guilt? Should one feel guilty for healing from the place of grief, however slowly? I have pondered this, especially as I notice now that I do not cry as often as I did before, at the thought of my loss. Sometimes, I smile when I read the WhatsApp chats, despite the tears in my eyes. And it is not a forced smile. I was never wont to jump-start a recovery in the first place.
I smile because I am grateful for their life, however brief. I am grateful that I celebrated them when they were here, told them how grateful I was for their monumental support. Grief lurks, so I inevitably remember the loss. But the reason it is no longer centre stage, the reason it now lurks, is because I am starting to heal.
