How to deal with grief. If only there was a manual that explained in simple terms what to do, how to react, how to move on. But there is no manual because we all deal with grief in our own way. When my friend John died this week, I sprang into action, notifying everyone who knew and loved him with personal, individual messages. The conversations went on for a day and a half. I felt, for once, I was useful. If there are tiers, as opposed to tears, I’d probably be in the second tier of John’s friends. Slightly outside the inner circle but still full of love and admiration for a great man. My pain would never be at the raw levels suffered by family or close friends and anyway it was never about me, but when the calls and messages were done, I crashed.
Wednesday morning saw me driving to Southmead Hospital. I was going to hand myself in, you see. I was going mad and I needed someone to help me. As I approached the hospital gates, something clicked. A voice seemed to say: “What are you doing? You have said this isn’t about you, but if you carry on like this, then it will be. Who does that help, exactly? No one, least of all you.” I drove past, pulled over and the moment passed.
As is so often the case with drivers, I had arrived somewhere without even thinking about it. Autopilot, really. Fully conscious now, I drove home. Played some music and my head was in another place. The music of my mind.
Music is, to me, magic. But then, everything I can’t do but someone else can do effortlessly, from playing a guitar, to erecting scaffolding to cutting hair, is magic. Music is there, sometimes to catch a mood, sometimes to create it, sometimes to define it. Doing nothing was making me stew. It had already all but driven me mad again. What shall I play?
I started, for no particular reason, with Ottolenghi by Loyle Carner and featuring Jordan Rakei. And it’s gorgeous. The video is set on a train, which guarantees extra points in my book. The lyrics aren’t about loss, but they do catch a wave of emotion. Carner’s poetry touches an emotion:
Life can be bad, it can turn bad in a second
So remember what I’m tryna show you
This life can be good one minute
And next minute it can turn bad
So don’t look down on nobody
’Cause that’s how life can turn for everybody
So remember it’s love everybody
And I’m gonna look for, like, for my time
Thank you
It’s one of those songs that just washes over you, a kind of warm shower of music. I’ve adapted Carner’s words to fit in with my feelings. “This life can be good one minute and next minute it can turn bad.”
Next, back to some old favourites about death and grief.
First, The Eagles and Bernie Leadon’s My Man, a gorgeous paean to the late, great Gram Parsons
My man’s got it madeHe’s gone far beyond the painAnd we who must remain go on living just the same.
“Far beyond the pain.” That bit definitely resonates. You do not want loved ones to suffer and the pain can be both physical and mental. Sometimes the end, death, can be a blessing, a deliverance. It was with my mum, my stepdad, with so many other people we have lost along the way. Earlier in My Man, Leadon sings “No man’s got it made till he’s far beyond the pain“, which turns finally into “My Man’s got it made” when the lights go out.
The Beach Boys’ ‘Til I Die is my go to funeral song, not least because I had it played at my mum’s funeral. Not the usual version from the epic Surf’s Up album, but the remix by engineer Steve Desper which appeared much later on the Endless Harmony film and soundtrack. I played it for me, not my mum who had probably never heard it. It’s not actually about a death that has already taken place, but more an exposition of how small, how insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things:
Please come down flyin’ low for me.”
