A little less than a year ago, I was reading blogs related to deaths – how the people who get left behind feel and cope with it, if it is painful for them to talk about it and whether the victims go through the 5 stages of grief. Months later standing at those crossroads, facing two deaths in a row, I’m not sure if I’m ready to answer it.
It is different for everybody, as much as I’ve seen these past few months. Some people cry their eyes out, make certain everyone around knows how painful the loss is and others, like me, block it all out, put on a happy face and refuse to think about it. It’s no pretence. There is no feeling inside, nothing to cry about, nothing to fight, no emotion at all. Everything is fine. It is just that when you say it out loud you’re called insensitive or perhaps, heartless. The “appropriate” emotion would be sadness, grief, resentment and if you’re not experiencing that, you are abnormal; something is really wrong with you! I know this is what I came to be known as – cold. What I would have suggested as the right word is numb. Incapable of feeling anything. It wears off, the numbness, the denial but not as quickly as others would have liked but it does. Taking tiny steps, it moves away from you and leaves a little hole inside. When it happened to me, only thought I had was “What do I do now?”
If you’re not miserable, be sure people will make you – with their talks, with their actions and even with their looks. You’re not supposed to be okay. Anything but fine. Cry. Yell. Do something crazy. Sit in the corner and don’t talk to anyone. Maintain a face that shouts ‘I JUST LOST SOMEONE’. Do anything other than that and they’ll eat you up alive. And then there’s guilt – ‘why am I not as wretched as others? Why am I over it so soon?’ You’re not; it has just started.
The Nile. My brain represses bad memories – anything that causes me tit bit of pain is blackened, forgotten, engulfed by the black hole. It gives me a chance to fully analyse the situation. It gives me a chance to deal with it one step at a time. ‘No need to make haste. You’ll deal with it when you deal with it’, it says. He’s not asking my permission or waiting for me to nod in approval – he is doing it in his way and not letting me know. My protective brain wants what’s best for me and he doesn’t care what anyone else makes of it. Sadly, I do. May be it is cowardice; may be it is a weakness; may be its apprehension; may be it is just how your system works. Period. I will get there, to the point where I’ll accept what’s happening but today is not the time. It will tell me on its own; I’m counting on it too. Someday, I will be fully aware of what I’ve lost. Why, is another story.
It is different for everybody but not everything is different. You can either believe that you don’t react like others or make yourself believe that you don’t react well. I chose the latter one and then the guilt was too much to handle. Surely, someone needs more than that – that someone who is not there anymore would want you to remember him, would want you to shed a few tears and not be all smiles. That someone deserves more and you should give him that acknowledgment that you care he’s gone. That someone needs to know you miss him. That someone should be certain that you will remember him always and never let him vanish off the earth. But he should also know that you are mourning in your own way. This is who you are and nothing can change this about you. Regardless to what people deem appropriate, you are coping with the loss, you are feeling the burden of the death. It might not show but he should know this – it is all there in the heart. One day, the leash would restrain it no longer and you’d be ready to unwind. Just because you are not making a public display of your misery doesn't mean the affection is lost.
