bereaved

We’ve been diverted from our regularly scheduled program.
Bereavement does that.

Time just keeps on ticking by, though, doesn’t it. It’s interesting to me how death is a part of life, and everyone gets to witness it, and everyone gets to experience it eventually. Cultures have developed intense and methodical storylines to explain what blissful series of events may happen beyond the event that our earthly bodies must eventually undergo, while also giving believers a list guidelines to follow beforehand – then these storylines become the justification for taking the lives of those who worship a different sky-dad.

*** If that sounds callous or offensive,
feel free to take it up with your religious leaders.

Yet here, in the first world, despite our common painful experience as witnesses to the inevitable, it can feel like nobody cares.

If you have ME in your life, it’ll almost definitely feel that way. I’m an emotionally dysregulated neurodivergent 40-something man who’s processing speed with things like this is akin to the spinning beachball that your antiquated computer with show you at the first sign of trying to do 2 things at once. I can apologize for that but I probably won’t; because to my mind, an apology needs to come with a changed behaviour and I’m not sure there are any upgrades to my processing speed at this point.

We had a family member pass away. I say ‘we’ because it wasn’t anyone in my immediate family, but an in-law. And… I’ll save the details out of respect, because I am not part of the narrative that the man’s children are setting. I am a supporter on the inner circle, and I did have a relationship with the man.

He was a very thoughtful conversationalist. A curious mind who loved to know the ins & outs of everything from politics to business. Always respectful, and had a very keen sense of justice. I will miss talking to him and helping him out with the odd task here & there.

A week ago, as I was on the verge of an ‘Irish-Goodbye’ at a family function, I was nudged to let him know I was leaving, so I did. He stood up, and shook my hand, and thanked me for coming. If I was going to have a final encounter with someone like him, I’m glad it was exactly that.

Are we judged by our deeds in the time we spend on earth? I don’t know and I really don’t care. Every last one of us is flawed, and although I am more than willing to have the conversation about whether or not we have free will on a normal day, this is not a normal day. Our existence must be more nuanced than that, but if that is indeed how it’s done then I’d be a lot more concerned if I had a religious belief system that I was betraying in the shadows like a hypocrite, than the flawed and (mostly) transparent man slouched behind his laptop on a mid-week holiday afternoon, typing all of this.

He had his flaws and his traumas like the rest of us, but he walked upright in the light, and he did the very best he could for his family and they; or rather, WE will miss him dearly. The lessons he imparted during his time with us will live on in the lives of his children and his grandchildren – and that’s about as immortal as any of us get to be.

I’ll grieve more outwardly when I’m ready. For now, I have hurting people around me and I don’t really know how to process that beyond recalling my own past trauma and cracking absurd jokes that; FORTUNATELY, I have learned to keep to myself.

In closing; I fight the urge to say what we everyone says when they’re experiencing this…
Give time to your elders.
Hug your homies.
Call your dad.
All of those hashtag-like sayings.

You might not actually do it.
I have a hard time with those things.
But I think the people I love who love me back know that the one time I gave them a hug… years ago… I meant it forever.