This blog's namesake died last Friday night, released from this life -- to borrow a phrase I used earlier in the month in a different context -- by a vet after my parents (and the vet) decided he was suffering too much to go on. We all had a list of preferred nicknames for Sherlock the yorkiepoo, but mine were mostly variants on Mister Suss. The origin is unclear, I assume I (or maybe someone else in the family) said it one day in his puppyhood while speaking to him in the babytalk voice that's so natural to use even with adult pets.
The context I used the phrase in earlier was in drafting a death notice for my youngest brother. He killed himself on 6 January, by jumping off a parking deck in the town where he lived. It took the coroner a few days to find out who he was because he wasn't carrying any ID. My other brother called me at 7 AM the following Wednesday; I'd returned to Islamabad from the Christmas holidays on the 3rd, so it was his Tuesday night. I ignored the first call, but when he called back right away I knew even before picking up that Jack had died.
That day and the next I cried a lot, talked to Linc and M&D, to my best friend, and to SRB most of all, who was wonderfully patient and present through my disoriented sadness. Early-early Friday morning I flew to Boston and then drove up to NH to be with the rest of the fam (my aunt Becca, who lives outside Boston, very kindly gave me a lift; one of the odd side effects of unexpected grief is that people jump to help and you end up in some unexpected conversations -- I'm sure that was by an order of magnitude the longest unbroken time I've ever spent with her and it was great to just chat).
Being with the family was essential because the weekend in NH was horrible. Seeing J's body, dealing with his apartment, talking to the staff and other people at the place where he was living: all incomprehensibly painful. But going through the shock and early grief together helped to make it more bearable. We drove down to M&D's house on Sunday evening, via Linc's, and then spent the rest of the week together there.
And now I'm back in Islamabad, far, far away from home again. Having to have the "I'm so sorry" conversation multiple, sometimes what feels like dozens of times a day while trying to catch up on work and deal with high-profile (for us) visitors.
What strikes me most as I write this is the continued unreality of Jack's death. We spent time with his body, first in the hospital and then in the funeral home before he was cremated. We wailed and wept together many times; I cried more that Wednesday and Thursday than I had cumulatively in my adult life, and then smashed that record to smithereens on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Deep, body crying was a new experience for me, the kind where you have trouble breathing. When we got his ashes the next day they were still warm, and I rode back to Mom and Dad's house with them in a sealed box between my feet.
But Linc and I both had the experience the week after Jack died of feeling like he had just gone off the radar again. He'd done it plenty of times before, and it was always scary but rarely dominated my attention. It became routine. So his being out of touch now, at a gut level, feels like it could just be that again. I know it's not, and I get waves of awareness of his death and my sadness at my -- our -- loss. But a lot of the time in the first three-plus weeks after finding out that he'd died my brain just seemed to tell me that he'll be back.
I started writing this last night and am poking along on it at work today to give myself breaks from the excruciatingly detailed (but useful, so that's okay) feedback we got from Canada on an early childhood development proposal that we're behind on. This morning, perhaps because I said something dumb last night and then didn't follow up on it well and so SRB is angry with me and I'm frustrated with myself, and also I barely slept for reasons only partly explainable by stressing over that interaction, I'm feeling the sadness about Jack more physically and "real-ly" than average.
While lying awake in bed last night I started imagining, on a loop, his last hours in his apartment: journaling, smoking cigarettes, looking out the window, rubbing his hands over his face, thinking about the parking deck. Alone. Those images are following me around today. They're almost cinematic, like a movie montage, edited unconsciously to efficiently tell the story my brain invented to explain or empathize or describe his death. I have no way of knowing, now, how close they hew to reality. One day I'll read Jack's journals and talk to M&D about their conversations with his circle in NH and maybe they will shed some light. In the meantime, I'm stuck in that neatly edited, profoundly sad loop.
Incidentally, there was a study of nuns that found those who in their youth wrote more complex sentences were less likely to develop dementia in old age. If the paragraph before the last one is any indication, I am never going to develop dementia. Mandatory remedial camp for devotees of sub-clauses and parenthetical asides, maybe.
SRB asked me the other night whether I felt like I had enough space to grieve and the answer, frankly, is no. Too much to do. I may take a day off this week or next to be with myself a little bit. Now back to work.
The context I used the phrase in earlier was in drafting a death notice for my youngest brother. He killed himself on 6 January, by jumping off a parking deck in the town where he lived. It took the coroner a few days to find out who he was because he wasn't carrying any ID. My other brother called me at 7 AM the following Wednesday; I'd returned to Islamabad from the Christmas holidays on the 3rd, so it was his Tuesday night. I ignored the first call, but when he called back right away I knew even before picking up that Jack had died.
That day and the next I cried a lot, talked to Linc and M&D, to my best friend, and to SRB most of all, who was wonderfully patient and present through my disoriented sadness. Early-early Friday morning I flew to Boston and then drove up to NH to be with the rest of the fam (my aunt Becca, who lives outside Boston, very kindly gave me a lift; one of the odd side effects of unexpected grief is that people jump to help and you end up in some unexpected conversations -- I'm sure that was by an order of magnitude the longest unbroken time I've ever spent with her and it was great to just chat).
Being with the family was essential because the weekend in NH was horrible. Seeing J's body, dealing with his apartment, talking to the staff and other people at the place where he was living: all incomprehensibly painful. But going through the shock and early grief together helped to make it more bearable. We drove down to M&D's house on Sunday evening, via Linc's, and then spent the rest of the week together there.
And now I'm back in Islamabad, far, far away from home again. Having to have the "I'm so sorry" conversation multiple, sometimes what feels like dozens of times a day while trying to catch up on work and deal with high-profile (for us) visitors.
What strikes me most as I write this is the continued unreality of Jack's death. We spent time with his body, first in the hospital and then in the funeral home before he was cremated. We wailed and wept together many times; I cried more that Wednesday and Thursday than I had cumulatively in my adult life, and then smashed that record to smithereens on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Deep, body crying was a new experience for me, the kind where you have trouble breathing. When we got his ashes the next day they were still warm, and I rode back to Mom and Dad's house with them in a sealed box between my feet.
But Linc and I both had the experience the week after Jack died of feeling like he had just gone off the radar again. He'd done it plenty of times before, and it was always scary but rarely dominated my attention. It became routine. So his being out of touch now, at a gut level, feels like it could just be that again. I know it's not, and I get waves of awareness of his death and my sadness at my -- our -- loss. But a lot of the time in the first three-plus weeks after finding out that he'd died my brain just seemed to tell me that he'll be back.
I started writing this last night and am poking along on it at work today to give myself breaks from the excruciatingly detailed (but useful, so that's okay) feedback we got from Canada on an early childhood development proposal that we're behind on. This morning, perhaps because I said something dumb last night and then didn't follow up on it well and so SRB is angry with me and I'm frustrated with myself, and also I barely slept for reasons only partly explainable by stressing over that interaction, I'm feeling the sadness about Jack more physically and "real-ly" than average.
While lying awake in bed last night I started imagining, on a loop, his last hours in his apartment: journaling, smoking cigarettes, looking out the window, rubbing his hands over his face, thinking about the parking deck. Alone. Those images are following me around today. They're almost cinematic, like a movie montage, edited unconsciously to efficiently tell the story my brain invented to explain or empathize or describe his death. I have no way of knowing, now, how close they hew to reality. One day I'll read Jack's journals and talk to M&D about their conversations with his circle in NH and maybe they will shed some light. In the meantime, I'm stuck in that neatly edited, profoundly sad loop.
Incidentally, there was a study of nuns that found those who in their youth wrote more complex sentences were less likely to develop dementia in old age. If the paragraph before the last one is any indication, I am never going to develop dementia. Mandatory remedial camp for devotees of sub-clauses and parenthetical asides, maybe.
SRB asked me the other night whether I felt like I had enough space to grieve and the answer, frankly, is no. Too much to do. I may take a day off this week or next to be with myself a little bit. Now back to work.
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