Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
“If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.” George Bernard Shaw.
I don’t want to write about death. Perhaps, the problem is more that I seem to want to write about death. It somehow feels a safer topic and infinitely more comfortable than attempting to confront, reconcile and define the eclectic compartments of my life and package them into a neat little ‘message’. I’m not a blogger, choosing an quotidienne topic and rattling off 300 words in between prettily filtered photos from an SLR isn’t something I’ve ever done. I don’t even use twitter of instagram. In general, I’m pretty terrible at being young in the conventional sense, although I feel, ironically, that I am improving at it with age.
But still, I feel that for someone who doesn’t particularly care about the finite nature of her own existence, I am haunted by death
More specifically, I am haunted by the dead. I don’t see ghosts and I don’t hold sayences (although, btw, my friend has it on good authority from her Fillipono mother that you should not mess with that shit), but I am haunted.
I’ve been surprised, over the last year, to meet three different young people who work in the same (youth run) organisation who had a friend their age die in or shortly after high school. I’ve not had to deal with that with anyone I’m close to, which I’m not shy in saying I think i’m lucky for. But in two and a half years, my mum’s only sibling died in hospital after an infection traveled to his already weakend heart, then my dad’s heart decided to announce boldly that it hadn’t been gastric reflux causing him pain for the past two years and that actually, his arteries were well and truly chock a block thank you very much. Unfortunately it did this in a fairly dramatic, tantrum like manner that resulted in his imminent death. Seriously arteries, even if you felt neglected after doctors continually dismissed the symptoms you were producing, better manners and a gentler warning would be nice, kthanks?
Grandma’s heart did the same thing less than a year later, a week after I came home. The sudden death of 94 year old, theoretically shouldn’t feel particularly tragic. But trust grandma, who for as long as I’d known her had died her hair bright red. She didn’t die in bed or on her armchair, but slumped spectacularly over a small table on the back verandah, wearing a dressing gown she hated and striped “wicked witch of the west” style knee high socks pulled up covered in slippers. My uncle’s imminent death was announced to me over the phone, my fathers by my mother’s unexpected and solitary appearance at my front door, and my grandmothers by the view of striped socks through the glass panes of her back door. The next evening is the only time I remember drinking to get drunk. And I did it with Sherry, of all things, what grandma and, until his death over a decade earlier, grandpa had drank each evening.
Death can really be quite funny. There are some hilarious moments I’d love to share with you, because without them, I feel the crushing weight of loss hanging over me without a purpose or outlet. So let’s talk about death. Let’s talk about death like we talk about sex, like we talk about chocolate or the Grammies. It’s part of life and for crying out loud, it’s always better to do just that than crumble from the inside out because we feel that people are scared to hear about what we’re feeling.
So next time, I’ll share with you the good, bad and the hilarious of my personal experiences with death and grief over the past few years and maybe you can laugh with me. Maybe you’ll think I’m a little nuts. Either option is infinitely better than the prospect of being haunted.
“Crushing truths perish from being Acknowledged”- Albert Camus
