GRIEF AND MOURNING

Since the beginning of life on this earth, death has been seen as the enemy, the “as yet unsolved problem.” But really death is not the problem. Rather it is our inability or unwillingness to accept the reality of life on its own terms, one of which is death; that’s the problem.

In her book The Year of Magical Thinking, written after the death of her husband of forty years, Joan Didion wrote, “Life changes in an instant; an ordinary instant … Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” That is a fact. When I arrived in that place, it wasn’t just sad, it was as wild and unpredictable as a roller-coaster.

I had expected to feel inconsolable and to appear insane at times. But I had not anticipated actually being inconsolable, as manifested in blind fury at anyone who dared to offer me any comfort at all. Nor was I prepared for actually going insane, the only possible description for my refusing to go home for a long time. But eventually the roller-coaster slowed, grief morphed into mourning and I returned to living with the hard-won knowledge that there are no norms to either.

I remember how, when the 10 year old son of a friend died, after the tangihanga she returned home and wrote of his last day and last moments with her. Then she published her account in the local newsletter as a tribute to her boy. That Māori mother upset some of her kuia hugely, because, for them, her writing fell outside the norms of tangihanga. But for her, there were no norms – she had never lost a son before.

I also remember how, in 1966, the collier Kaitawa left Westport loaded with coal for the Portland cement works and, as she rounded the North Cape in heavy seas she broke up and sank with the loss of all 29 crew. A few months later, some of our whānau happened to be at the Cape when the mother of one of those drowned souls arrived to see for herself where her boy had died. Upon hearing her keening grief, our kaumātua and his whānau went to her and started the call and response of Te Hohonutanga. Then they all put their arms around that Pākehā mother and wept. They knew that there were no norms; that death and life happen on their own terms.

The thought of my own death has never perplexed or worried me much. But that of those close to me; ahhh, those are another matter. Even though I believe in life after death, I have learned that it does not come with set rules, a certain script, known way stations or a sure endpoint.

I have also learned that in order to be comforted when someone I love dies, or to bring comfort to someone else, it helps me to remember that there are no norms to grief and mourning, and that the best thing to do is share loving words and acts of service with those who have arrived in that place.

“.. e tau iho te tangi i te ahiahi, a i te ata he hari. [Psalms 30:5]