Grief At First, At Last

Reading Robin Robertson’s elegy for his father “A Show of Signs” I recognised the evocation of grief like a punch in the stomach.

The fourth stanza carries particular resonance:

Death is first absence, then a presence

Of the dead amongst the living:

The kick of grief like a turning fin, that whelms

But cannot break the surface.

The word “whelms” fills your mouth. If I was to teach this poem, I would say to the students: feel this word in your mouth, see how you have to slow down when you say it, experience this slowing down as part of the jerky rhythm of the line. It is a word that seems to overwhelm the mouth, like the grief overwhelming the poet. Sound embodying meaning: onomatopoeia.

The first two lines relate the experience of loss that anyone who has ever lost a relative, a friend or a lover can identify with. The dead is forever gone, no longer present among the living. Yet he or she is also, very soon, present. Through the memories that cling on; snapshots from the past; the recalled voice or laugh; the vanished smile.

The image of grief in the other two lines is an image of a fish’s fin turning underwater and everything under its arch is submerged. This is the force of grief: it has a “kick” that does not break through to air, an inward-turning, disabling force.

What happens to grief over time? It is felt less as a “kick”, more like something banal assimilated into the everyday, of a piece with the mundane. It will appear to have disappeared. Life will appear to have gone on, the living will appear to have moved on.

But make no mistake: the absence of the dead person has become “presence,” altering the lives of the grieving persons left behind. “The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything,” writes CS Lewis after the death of his wife in A Grief Observed.

Life does go on, but so does grief. Grief does not end. Who I am after Boon’s death is distinct from who I was before. Have I not lost others through death before? Yes. My great grandmother – when I was eight. Her health had been failing over a long period of time. A much-loved colleague at the school – a sudden unexpected loss. But not this close – not a lover.

A friend of Boon’s, CC, was on his way to Korea when he heard about Boon. He flew back to Singapore instead, together with his wife, and they came straight to the hospital from the airport. Both of them spent a lot of time comforting me and Boon’s mom as we sat and waited in the corridor. CC said to me during one of those afternoon vigils: this will be a turning point for you. Nothing will be the same again. I took it to mean, that when Boon recovers and is discharged, everything in our lives will have to change. Why of course, I thought. I never thought he would not wake up again. If the thought came to me, I rejected it.

Now CC’s words can be understood in terms of Boon’s presence in my life as an absence. By presence I do not mean that grieving for him consumes my life. No, not that. Presence in terms of remembering who he was, what a great guy he was, how bloody annoying he could be sometimes about cleanliness, and how obsessive he was about keeping records, filing old emails, keeping post-it note pads in the car.

Presence in terms of not pushing away fragments of him that surface from time to time. Like this morning. Waking up and seeming to hear his voice. It made me sad, but it also made me smile as I forced myself to get out of bed and make the first bitter cup of espresso. Good morning. I remember the sound of his voice. Good.

Grief becomes part of the living’s understanding of who he or she is after the death of the loved one. Like love, it does not come to a full stop when the loved one stops breathing. Don’t we continue to miss the things we have lost after we lose them? I lost an umbrella in 2011 that I had owned and used since I was 18 and I still think of it sometimes.

(An umbrella, Wei! Get a grip! – Actually . . . I lie when I say that I think of it sometimes. I think of it very, very often.)

The last date in the journal started on October 7:  November 12, same year, 2012. That was the day after what would have been Boon’s 35^th birthday if he had still been alive on November 11, 2012. On the bus to work today I re-read what I wrote yesterday and I had to get the tissue out. Grief kicks and whelms me.

As long as we love, we continue to grieve. Because of love, we cherish our grief, we take care of it, we allow it to take its rightful place in our hearts. It can reside there, truthfully, legitimately, with a name.

The presence of absence can also refer to that less than clear-cut divide between the living and the dead at the earlier stages of mourning. The living may continue to discover things about the dead, and their relationship may seem to the living to continue to evolve because of the newly attained knowledge about the dead person. “Why didn’t you tell me …” “I had no idea she was good at …” New sides of the person are uncovered, and even though the person is no longer around, the living grow in their understanding of the dead. New insight nurtures the relationship, adding new layers to it, albeit unilaterally.

This is why some people continue to speak to the dead. They speak out loud, as if the person is there. They tell the dead how their day was, what they had for lunch, who they saw at church. It sounds rather theatrical, doesn’t it? Well, I went through it, and when I talked to Boon in this fashion for a few weeks after his death, I did not feel like I was acting. I did not think, oh no, I have truly lost it. No – talking to Boon felt like the most natural thing in the world to be doing. But there also came a time when these one-way conversations stopped. I cannot remember why or how. And the nightly dreams of Boon – after a while, they too stopped. The dream last night was the first one I have had since March.

(to be continued)