Can you imagine how grief must've been, even a generation or two ago? I can plop into my chair at my desk and vent my grief into the void of the Internet without even putting on pants. Can you imagine if we could all grieve pantless? How liberating!
I have a fairly good understanding of how grief was handled a couple generations back. My mom lost her father at the age of six, and society taught her widowed mother to bottle up all that grief, to never show a tear. It's that 1950's our-neighbors-seem-perfect-so-we-must-seem-perfect mentality. And being pantless? Pshew, fugeddaboutit. In the words of Inez Wong on Futurama: "No one likes a widow." Of course that was meant to be a joke on the show. But in the Baby Boom, it was a cultural truth.
A hundred or so years ago, before the ticky-tacky times, mourning was amazing. You'd wear all black (pants still a necessity, though) and strangers on the street would come up and ask you who you lost. What happened?
It's no surprise that Western culture doesn't really like to feelings. Especially somebody else's feelings. But if you notice, everybody has a ridiculously authoritative opinion on the nature of feelings. And the almighty dollar makes a loud argument to get your ass back to work on Monday, regardless of, you know, who died or whatever.
The solution isn't clear. We can't demand everybody kowtow to our feelings, but we need to share with somebody. I'm so thankful for the Internet in this regard. People can share as much as they want, pants or no. Plus, there's all kinds of handy "block" features in social media. No need for hostility if you disapprove of someone's grief. Just keep on walking, in those tight, judgmental pants, and we can grieve in peace.
I wish I could dress in black and have my loss simply understood. Not for the sympathy persay, but for the right to speak my story, his story. As we as a society shy away from feelings we lose the right to speak our stories face to face. We can use the Internet thankfully but that's different, that's writing. It's more introspective. It's helpful in a different way. When we can share a story with voice and feeling it's freeing. The lack of that makes death less familiar more scary. Once we all shared and supported each other through our losses in a much different way.
ReplyDeleteFuchsia
Sharing our story, I've been told, is a necessity to transcending our grief. I don't think anyone in grief needs sympathy. But empathy, that's something we all crave desperately, and sharing our story helps others empathize.
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