A time to grieve: Observations on mourning loss

Death, in all its banality and horror, doesn’t give us time to prepare. It often comes unannounced — and without guidance. 

But I think seeing it up close does something to us.

At 33, I’ve had my share of encounters with death. I’ve not personally come close to taking my final breath, at least that I’m aware. I just mean I’ve gone through the experience of losing someone close to me.

I don’t have advice for coping, I’m not that wise. And I don’t pretend to have any answers. Just observations.

We all face potential tragedy

My first memory of death came from when I was around 4 or 5 years old. A girl from my school, around my age, died from leukemia. I remember my parents offering a simplistic explanation and feeling as sad as a toddler can be about something like that.

At 12, I attended an open casket funeral with my parents and sister. The deceased was a toddler. Tragically, he had been run over by a vehicle while playing in his driveway. I hesitated to write that sentence. I mean, God. What a horrible thing to endure. 

Those early experiences taught me something. We’re all susceptible to tragedy. Even me.

If we live long enough, we get old

I’m not sure how old I was when my great grandmother died. She was 102, frail and my friend. I remember her stories from childhood, which replayed in her mind as she got older. I remember the feeling of her prickly lips kissing my cheek. Her musty fragrance. The caramel candies.

My last moment with her came in the hospital. We all gathered around her bed. The beeping, sanitized room reminded us all of death’s imminence. It was understood this would be the last time we’d see her breathing. But I couldn’t find words — it felt too forced.

It wasn’t until we all walked out of the room that I realized the gravity of it all. I let my family keep walking. I turned around and went back to utter a teary goodbye.

My grandfather died in 2016, after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He couldn’t speak words in his last moments, just grunts and drawn-out moans. I like to think he heard every word, and that he was telling us he loved us. 

These moments taught me something. If we live long enough, we all get old. 

We all decompose

I recently had the unsettling privilege of being in the living room of a man who had died a week prior. It was during a ride-along with Ashland police.

When you see a body like that — twisted in its final pose, skin blackened from pooled blood — it forces something open in you. It’s something you don’t always want to look at.

I kept thinking about the way the man’s fingers curled. Like they couldn’t decide between clenched and relaxed. He’d died wearing sweatpants, no shirt. A normal guy, probably liked fishing. There were pictures on the mantel: grandkids, mushrooms, him holding up a big fish.

I assumed, wrongly, that he was Black. The skin tone tricked me — something called livor mortis, I’d later learn. It’s the process where gravity pulls blood downward after death. His skin had darkened in patches where it settled.

The smell of an actively decomposing human body is profound. Like rotting pineapple with a hint of mothballs.

But it’s not unique. Putrescine is one of the compounds released when we die. The processes of decomposition is as natural as life itself. And it’s the same process that will happen to all of us once we die.

We’re allowed to grieve

I was in college when my best friend died. Another tragedy. He died a violent death that involved a knife.

I remember the moment I learned about it. Living on my own at the time, it was early in the morning when my phone rang on the bedside table. 

I picked up the phone and knew by the silent hesitation that something bad had happened. My mom’s voice shook before she finally mustered the courage to deliver the news. He had been killed.

“What?”

I had heard her. 

“He’s gone. I’m so sorry, Dillon.” 

I hung up. At this point, I was sitting up in my tiny, twin-sized bed, room a-clutter with homework and piles of laundry. I don’t recall how much time passed as an irrepressible sob poured out of me.

His death happened nearly 13 years ago. Every December, the month of his passing, I slip into a funk that can only be understood as grief.

For years, I struggled with defining those feelings as grief. It couldn’t be that — he wasn’t my brother. He wasn’t my child; he wasn’t my parent. I didn’t deserve to feel what his family still feels.

I’m still learning to accept this observation, but losing him has been teaching me that I’m allowed to grieve. 

Grief takes different forms. Whether we lose a parent, grandparent, acquaintance, friend or total stranger — we’re allowed to grieve the loss of a fellow human being. 

Life is fragile and weird and all over too fast. When it’s time to grieve and mourn, do it.

In the meantime, we cling to the ones we love and, hopefully, learn how to do it better with each passing day.