When someone says they are grieving, the immediate image that springs to my mind is a 19th century noblewoman, clad entirely in black, maybe even clutching a bible. It is a word that has such weight to it culturally; mourning used to be an entire ritual, one that saw you forgo ordinary society for a prescribed period of time to remerge cleansed from the horrors of death. I’ve been thinking on this subject recently, in three different ways: grief for the past, grief for the dead, and grief for the living.
I went to a school in rural England that was essentially the whole town. A school spread across various side roads, intertwined with charity shops and the local chippy. I wore a knee-length kilt and spent lunchtimes playing card games, tennis, indulging in gossip and doing the homework for the next lesson. There was a distinct way you dressed if you went to my school: white linens, baggy vintage jumpers, beaten-up trainers and chunky jewellery. I was part of the same friend group for six years. Yes, people drifted in and out, but largely I remained surrounded by the girls who’d seen me get drunk for the first time and the boys who would get overly competitive over a game of pool. Then I came to college. I knew absolutely no one and I was struck with this intense nostalgia for a life I used to lead. And it felt like grief. The places I used to haunt still existed, I still spoke to the same friends, and we still chatted like we were still in our final year common room. But the life I once led no longer existed. I could go back to the same buildings, but there was a strange sense that I was an imposter in a place that I knew so well. During the holidays, we would all reconvene at the same terrible pub we used to underage drink in, and it became so clear to me that so much had changed. There was the friend who spent three months in New Zealand. The girl who had moved to Ohio. Someone had a new boyfriend who I’d never met. It was the death of a former life I began to grieve. I would become crushed under the weight of nostalgia for my school days, scouring through photos and videos to recapture the feelings I had at the time, the endeavour proving unsuccessful. It was odd because I could see all the pieces, but the puzzle no longer fit together.
Now, the more traditional form of grief. The loss of a loved one. My grandmother died recently and observing different reactions to death always strikes me: how people process it, how friends react, how life seems to slow down for a bit. I was at a society night out when my dad called me, which I later argued was news that could wait until the morning when I hadn’t drunk an entire bottle of wine. He defended it saying, “it’s better to ruin a night, rather than a whole day”. Even that thought process struck me: the way to even deliver the news was considered differently. I wasn’t particularly close to this relative, which creates another kind of grief. I have lost grandparents before and been more upset. I’ve lost pets before and been even more upset. So, there was an underlying sense of guilt when life just carried on for me because she wasn’t in my life before, and she still isn’t (albeit in a slightly more permanent way). I think guilt and grief often go hand in hand in this way. Since everyone processes these things differently, there is a strange comparison between experiences of death. And to not to grieve in a way that seems ‘appropriate’ can be perceived as callous or on the other extreme, melodramatic. Personally, I make uncomfortable jokes in these scenarios. Which is not to say that I do not take death seriously, but more that for those few moments that I see my friends’ faces drop in abject horror the whole grieving process becomes a little bit lighter. If I can generate laughter in the face of tragedy, that sadness is not all consuming.
Finally, grief for the living: a weird one. I felt this most during my most recent break-up. It is fundamentally uncomfortable to go from being the closest you can be with a person to not talking within a few hours. It’s deeply unsettling. Now there is a person wandering the streets that knows exactly how you like your coffee in the morning, that you set timers to go to sleep instead of setting an alarm, and that you don’t eat peas due to a traumatic incident in 2007. Saying that an ex is dead to you seems too harsh. But in a way they are. Even if you’re one of those insane people that claim they are friends with their ex, that relationship and that person mean entirely different things now. I found myself feeling like I was genuinely grieving. At points it didn’t feel like heartbreak, it felt like mourning. Mourning the future I had been promised and mourning a kind of self-death. The death of who I was when I was in love was disturbing, like overnight I’d become someone different who I didn’t recognise. This sense of grief is perhaps the most complicated because it felt so multi faceted. Again, there was an odd sense of guilt that I wasn’t justified in mourning someone who is still alive. But in death, you get closure. Closure in relationships is entirely a scam; yes, it’s over, but you never know if or even when you will see them again.
Anyone feeling any sort of grief is being faced with a challenge that can seem insurmountable. There are processes in each case, there is change, and there is sadness. Adding guilt into this cocktail makes it all the more lethal. It’s not simple or easy to navigate. The tunnel can seem unlit and endless. Now I truly see the appeal of formal mourning periods. Bring those back for 2026.
