Taking Time to Mourn

My father at a wedding last year

Little did I think that my first post for The Slow Life would be about death, but my father has just passed away, my favorite person in the world, and suddenly my entire life has been put into new perspective. When you lose someone dear to you, nothing else should be as important as mourning their passing, and yet that is just not how it happens. Since the moment he passed on I have been the busiest I have ever been in my whole life, planning funerals, comforting others, handling 2 households, taxes, paperwork, announcements, garage sales, accommodations for family, covering work, and above all...covering the costs. And all the while, grief and sadness threaten to shut down my body with exhaustion at any moment. If I let myself, there could be whole days of business in which I would forget why I was even doing these tasks, only to be overwhelmed with sadness and shock the next minute in remembrance, but that is a dangerous roller-coaster to be on, because then I never know when the pain will resurface and it rarely does so at a good time! Death is not like it is in the movies, where the loved ones are emotionally comfortless up until the funeral and then suddenly recovered. Instead it is a full journey of ups and downs and slow stages of letting go. It has been a surprising challenge for me to pause and take the time, when I feel sad, to actually let myself feel sad, especially when it is so much easier to be busy and numb, but I am learning that it is incredibly important to take the time to mourn.

All during this process I couldn't help but notice the difference between the small town community where my parents live and the city life that I lead, because in their small community the news traveled up the grapevine within three hours (one of those rare situations where gossip is appreciated!) and the memorial was planned before the family even thought of such things. Neighbors that we didn't even know brought food for our fridge and chipped in money to rent the town hall for the service. And when I tried to thank one man and reimburse him, he just said "That's what we do for one another. You just worry about mourning right now."  And it was like a great weight was lifted off my shoulders, just to be given permission to feel my grief. During most of this month I have been stealing moments to be alone and cry, but almost with a guilt at taking the time to do so, because there has been so much else to do and so many other people to be "strong" for. This is why the ritual of a funeral is so important, so that we pause a moment and actually acknowledge someone's passing and our own sadness about it. But mourning does not end after the funeral, it can take years and it comes and goes in waves of letting go.

I have often wished lately that we still wore black for a specific period of time to mark a loved one's passing. It would help, I think, to let the world know that we are now changed, and our minds distracted. It would also just be a significant way of marking the event for ourselves, to acknowledge to ourselves that we are grieving and be allowed the space to do so. After I came back to my own home, I had a hard time coping with the pace around me. I kept wondering why the world hadn't stopped, and it was also hard because nobody around me knew that I was mourning, I was in a different city where no one knew my father. The day after I came home, I booked a hair appointment and cut off all my hair. I'm talking shoulder-length to a one-inch pixie cut. Isn't that funny? I didn't know why I had done it at the time, but later I realized that I just needed to do something, anything, to signify that I was no longer the same person. My father had passed and I would never be the same. I guess that was my own form of mourning dress.

Anyway, expressing my thoughts is a great help in acknowledging my own grief so thank you for hearing them and please feel free to share your own experiences of mourning with me, I'm sure it would be a great comfort to share them with you.

Take care,
Nina