The final funeral of my year of funerals took place last Friday, a strangely brief and generic affair for old pal Peter, ending, at least for now, a desperately sad and distressing 2025. In each instance, I know that my grief is second to the families, particularly the partners and children, who will feel the immediacy of the pain perhaps forever. The cumulative effect, at least, I managed, until now. What’s left? For me, the only word I can think of is emptiness.
I dealt with the four deaths in my life using my coping strategies, the first being hours of mental preparation for what the next steps might be, like death and the funeral and the second, I suspect, courtesy of a heavy dose of antidepressants which may have helped keep the tears away. Not that I was scared of crying: I just didn’t. Or not yet, anyway.
Thinking things through is a normal process for me because I overthink everything anyway. I dealt with much of the grief and planning as I lay in bed into the early hours. This would happen, that would happen. What if someone did or said something unexpected? I’d think of myriad examples and kept them at hand in case they were needed. I coped and now I am on the other side. And I haven’t prepared for this bit.
I feel the loss in a number of ways, but one specifically. When I think of something, an idea, a news item or a memory, perhaps, my reaction is to contact the now deceased. A slow second goes by until I realise that they are not there to contact. There’s no one to tell instead. These things were specific. Some were incredibly personal, too, and now I keep those thoughts to myself. Maybe I always shall?
Multiply the grief by infinity for a lost close relative, a mother, a father, a partner or a child and I have my perspective and that, so far, keeps me grounded. I never cried, I never broke down, but I know that my mental health has plummeted. Happily – hardly the right word – I know how to cope with that. A lifetime of an Oscar winning standard of acting enables me to present the illusion of stoicism, that somehow I rose above grief; it was just another day. Of course it wasn’t. I crashed like so many others. There’s nothing to be proud of. It just happened, it’s just me.
If I could, I’d be in therapy by now. Not just to help me deal with the loss of loved ones, but to deal with this malfunctioning, misfiring brain. Therapy from the parasitic private health sector is not an option and I can forget all about the miserable apology for a health centre down the road from us that has failed to even respond to my requests for assistance, let alone tell me I can’t have any more drugs and I should simply pull myself together and get on with it. Honestly, if I was a suicide risk, I’d be long dead.
The only way is to think things through again, a grim and unsettling process that repeats itself day after day. Night after night, getting things straight in my head, drifting off into a series of panicky anxiety-ridden dreams only to wake up exhausted. This doesn’t strike me as a healthy situation at all, but as I am not yet in need of Samaritans I’m deemed to well. Clinical depressive with ADHD heal thyself. Fat chance.
It’s not fair. Of course it’s not fair. But so what? It’s not as if there’s any design for life, no supernatural dictator directing events, nothing happens for a reason. The accident of our birth gives us a life like this, where we live and ultimately die and that’s it. The sadness and tragedy is part of the deal. In the end, emptiness is all there is. Better get used to it now while there’s still time.
