I missed the memo on how to behave in awkward situations. Apparently my go-to strategy is somewhere between stunned-mullet or inappropriate humour, anything but graceful.
During the 2020 lockdowns I had become friends with three neighbourly women as we passed each others’ front yards. In the pockets of non-lockdown the four of us would meet up, and share with each other our fears, complaints, plans, hopes, successes, yearnings, our latest kitchen concoctions, laughter and too many inappropriate conversations to mention… Always laughter, potentially more vivacious for the fermented lubricant imbibed.
Recently, uncharacteristically, a call came through the group chat. I answered first, on the iPad. No headphones handy… “click” another of us answered the call momentarily after me.
“Can someone come now? I’ve just got back from work and found Cam dead on the couch!” her voice echoed over speakerphone. “W H A T ?” She repeated that he was dead. I ran down the street to alert Jo who hadn’t heard the call. We decided the only thing to do was something, even if we didn’t know what.
Is there anything like death to prompt questions? How? Neither of us could fathom that it could have been deliberate. I don’t remember much of the car journey, possibly repeating “WTF?” more than was necessary.
We arrived to the police still in attendance, so we took the dogs for a walk and went upstairs until the police left. I was first down the stairs and stopped in my tracks.
He’s still here!
Jo jumped as she bumped into me, rooted to the spot on the bottom step, and staring at his body on the floor. Vicky started moving furniture around so we could all sit. The house remained unfinished in its set-up since we’d helped them move house seven days prior.
“I’ll put the kettle on then. Who wants a cup of tea?” Jo asked…
Another continued, explaining procedures… Coroner’s Report. Autopsy. Funeral. Will.
I stayed silent. Was I meant to be doing anything? I knew sharing what was going on in my head was exactly what I was not meant to be doing…
How you doin’ Cam, you’re looking a bit off-colour there… Jo’s making tea, do you want one?
After I chose a mug I deduced was likely not Cam’s mug, I followed Vicky’s invitation to sit on the sofa. Exactly where Cam had died hours earlier. Is Cam OK with that?
Hey Cam, I can see you’re a bit flat out there, do you mind if I sit in your spot?
Cam’s body at my feet.
His feet protruding from under a blanket.
I just kept staring at his socks. As I sat, stunned, wondering what had happened, I pondered what I was meant to be doing to help. I felt so useless. Clearly we were all too late to call an ambulance. The coroner was already en-route.
Bit of an extreme measure to get us all over on a Saturday night to celebrate your birthday mate…
I wondered so many things as I sat, mute. Memories of us all at Christmas, at Vicky’s 50th, at Wednesday evening drinks and giggles. …I realised that through our rag-tag little group (including another couple of unexpected friendships), I had let my guard down and was learning to trust again.
Here we were all there for this moment and if any of us had taken different paths, we may never have met. What if? …any of us had done anything differently?
As I stared at his body, it seemed in death nothing else mattered anymore. The what ifs evaporated. I looked over to my friend, kneeling next to her partner. Standing. Walking over to grab his phone. What happened? When was his last text message or call? Sitting. Kneeling again. So fraught with overwhelming grief. I watched our individual reactions. The calm tea-maker. The talkative planner. The grieving partner. And me, unusually silent.
Can someone catch me up on what to do right now?
But there was nothing to do. Obviously nothing was going to bring him back. Not for one last day. Not for a moment. Not to call himself an ambulance in time.
What’s life about Cam? And it dawned on me. This is it. Here is friendship right here. There was nothing else to do. Who knows where we’ll all be in five years time? But right now there were a bunch of women supporting our friend with all we had.
Our presence.
A couple of weeks later, at afternoon tea we all brought something to share. I asked what was his favourite…
“I’ll put one of your shortbreads in his pocket before he’s cremated.”
In the weeks that followed, I witnessed something other friends had told me about, others’ judgment of their grief.
My experience is that grief has no timeline nor linear path. I was astounded when a different friend had told me her therapist had told her that her process of grief of the untimely death of her child, would go in a certain order. You’ll feel this, then this, then you’ll feel that…
Where did this allegedly experienced psychologist get her qualification? The University of Weetbix?
Last month a friend told me she was ‘still’ grieving her dad. He had died in May 2020. She lives overseas now, and due to lockdowns she had been unable to see him before he died, and unable to return for his funeral. …but apparently, according to someone in her circle, she shouldn’t be feeling so bad 15 months on. Her dad had a good innings, hadn’t he? I listened.
At work last week in a chat with a colleague we discussed how we both felt that grief never leaves, that we had both just learned to live with it. Her eyes watered as she recounted the death of her cousin in their adolescence.
Last year an elderly man staring straight ahead, his shuffling gait reminded me of when I used to Grandpa-sit to give Nanna some respite so she could go to a regular evening meeting. As this elderly man teetered towards me, his hand clenched tight gripping his bag of doughnuts, instantly I couldn’t see ahead for the tears completely clouding my vision. I couldn’t breathe for feeling winded, as if I’d just been punched hard in my sternum. I was immediately in 1985 walking Grandpa around the block after his quadruple heart bypass, his feet shuffling and hand gripping my elbow tight for balance. 25 years since his death, my grief was raw and incapacitating as if he had died last week.
“Well, she needs to move on, she can’t just sit in their bedroom all day…”
…to which I found myself rather fiercely responding that I had never lost a partner, and I’d never been in a relationship like theirs, so I have no idea what she’s supposed to feel, and it’s nobody’s business to say when she’s supposed to stop feeling it!
Anyone else’s ‘should’ is nothing more than a projection based on their own unaddressed hurt.
In death. And in life.
Our individual experience, exactly that, unique by definition.
And maybe we should be normalsing being changed by grief
instead of scheduling and compartmentalising it and pretending like it didn’t happen.
“What’s it all about, this life and death malarkey Cam?” I allowed myself to take my eyes off his feet and look at his face, eyes slightly open. So peaceful, despite the pain he would have been in before dying.
Did we pay attention to our connection with ourselves and with others? Did we support each other in our own unique expressions of life? Did we fill our time with life? Did we share the load?
So, if I stare at you blankly during conversation, maybe put the tea on, let’s just have a sit down and be OK in the dead silence, otherwise we might both be stunned by what next plops out of my mouth.
…and grab a shortbread for your pocket, for good luck, on the way out…
Teapot is on, the cups are waiting,
Favourite chairs anticipating,
No matter what I have to do,
My friends, there’s always time for you.
– Author Unknown
Names and stories shared with permission.
