Loss and grief in various cultural groups and communities.

[Donte]

This month is five years since my partner died. Even though it’s been so long ago, some times it feels like yesterday. At other times it feels a hundred years ago.


The family is organizing a get-together dinner on the anniversary and I feel dreadful. I don’t think I have the energy or the emotional capacity to attend but also I’m scared to refuse in case they think I don’t care anymore or that I don’t consider them family nowadays.


Everything reminds me of him.
simple, beloved, everyday things of ours. I drive outside his work and stuck at the lights I find myself unable to move on. Listening to the tunes that we loved, going in the places that we used to hang out. Everything is as it was. But nothing is the same.


The first year I couldn’t function. I hated this city. I didn’t want to be here without him.


All our love used to fill our home, our lives, our hearts. Now I sing alone the songs we both used to sing.


Faces, places, smells, books, films, songs, and words, everything have his name written all over, and the dream is over!
What remains now is memories and sentiments.


Everything reminds me of him
and our closest friends seem all to have moved on.


He was kicked out of home at fifteen and never returned. Cut them all off. Even on his deathbed he didn’t want anything to do with them. I contacted them after his death and met them for the first time at the funeral.


Alone here now, I'm reading the letter he had given me
before we kissed for the first time.


I’m ok. I don’t want you to worry about me. I see a counselor. I’m on antidepressants. I walk and swim and rest. I try to eat well. Have a couple of friends. I take each day as it comes. I have new interests and new work. A daughter whom I love dearly and a dog that has brought me out of the darkest place.

I’m just not the same person anymore. There are certain aspects of us that certain people are able to bring up to the surface. Whoever I used to be with him, because of him, has died with him. And certain aspects of him still live in me. It is very different now. Life has changed.

How do you deal with loss? What’s an appropriate way to express grief in your family? In your culture? In your community? And I’m not only referring to death-related grief but any loss - migration, work, divorce, chronic illness, aging etc all can represent losses that carry grief with them.

Lend me a shoulder to cry on and I’ll lend you mine. X

[Elizabeth CP]

Donte's statement I think it's more accurate to say that death transforms relationships, rather than ending them. What seems necessary for me is not so much distancing from memories of my loved one, but embracing them, and changing the relationship from one based on physical presence to symbolic connection. is accurate. The grief process varies according to the nature of this process.

For example after my dad died my mum moved in with me so I could care for her. She exchanged one loving person caring for her to myself my husband & her young grandchildren. She still had other people reaching out to her to make her feel welcome in her new home. Until the day she died she looked forward to being with my dad again but she was still able to enjoy life with our family. She missed him but this was tempered by knowing he died quickly & was free of the illness which had been part of his life for many years.

In contrast another friend lost her husband in a car accident caused by the other person. In this case there was anger towards to other driver which complicated the grief process. The daughter developed severe depression due to her dad's death. It is impossible for other people to understand someones grief because each case is so different[. There is no such thing as a 'normal' period to mourn!!!!

[Donte]

You are right dave-h,

Thank you for commenting on this thread. It does differ from culture to culture. And it does differ from individual to individual. And it does depend on the relationship and the connection one had with the deceased.

Have you lost anyone close to you? What's your experience of grieving?

[Donte]

Absolutely Elizabeth CP.

Every case differs, and even in the same case, each person has had a different connection to the deceased. I grieve the death of my partner whereas his mother grieves the death of her son and his twin sister the death of her brother etc....

We are all connected to him in different ways and our grief connects us with each other because of our loss of him and the loss of ourselves that comes with it. (I'm not a partner anymore. His mum is not a mum anymore, and his sister is not a sister now. He's gone. Thus, who we were because of him and through him and with him is also gone. But he also lives in us and we're still here mourning the loss and trying to hold on to what we had which now we don't.

[Donte]

There is a kind of loss that takes place on a collective level and a grief which is generational but nevertheless affects the individual as well as the group or Community we find identify with.

This loss is a universal experience and not only in communities of migrants. However, in these communities the experience differs.

I am talking about our favorite actors, beloved singers, authors, poets and the pop-culture figures we grew up with which shaped our tastes and influenced our views, the way we dress, our behavior etc at some deep subconscious level.

Every generation grows up with their own ‘ heroes’ and ‘idols’. I was born at the end of 60s and the 70s music and culture influenced my childhood before my teen years which took place in the80s.

There is something extraordinarily different about adolescence. Hormones kick in, the child is left behind and the person embraces adulthood. Rebelliousness and a clash with any form of authority is often necessary in order for the child to break away from childhood and come out into the world in a new, transformed shape as a young adult.

This passage, from the childhood stage is significant and shapes the individual in ways that perhaps no other life stage does.

By the time we reach mid-life, many of our adolescent idols and heroes are dead. One by one, names of famous ‘stars’ become tabloids. We are aging and left without our favorite singers, producers, actors, authors, poets, athletes, politicians etc. The icons that were significant to us, the ones whose faces adorned our walls on the posters we used to stick over our beds are gone before us. A whole generation of people dead, and together an era that is permanently gone and has taken with it a part of us - our childhood is dead.

Additionally, many migrants, like myself, do not have relatives or family in this new country. As the years turn to decades, their family members and relatives overseas die one by one. A time comes when there is nobody left in your country of birth whom you are related to. That invisible link you felt with your past, your childhood, your culture is broken. You are now an alien, a foreigner, an outsider, when and if you ever happen to visit your homeland again.

One can experience a deep loss of the primary identity formed in childhood no matter where they are. But the loss is intensified by migration as one is cut-off from its original context which in time ceases to exist.

Theres a sweet melancholy you are left with.

[Donte]

Days slip from my hands. It's been many years now since I lost my laughter. I try to dream inside my heart but is not enough. It's never enough. How would I love to see him again, to hear his laughter like in the old days...To see him laugh, to smile at me and laugh with me. Just for a moment and then time can disappear. Now the clouds hide the sun and this rain is relentless...

[Donte]

To all those who've passed and left something in us. The ones who made our life poetry. The ones whom we met and instantly thought: Wow, here's someone like me! In every difficult moment by our side. Those miserable childhood Sundays, dreading the school in the morning... the forgiveness they offered, the numerous disappointments, our flooded by tears homes...smiles, life is just a madness. A brief mist. They're not laughing anymore. Life filled with silence. Nothing. Even with borrowed wings, they help us dream, they make us look toward something. Every time the words don't come out, and the breath is struggling, every time I cease to feel, they come close to me again, secretly in my dreams. Get up. Laugh you bastard. Life is madness. Don't take it to heart. A dream within a dream. And when I wanna discover which dream, I am in, my mind slips to those gone before me. Am I here or am I not? When I ascend changing dimensions they'll be there next to me as always accompanying me with their naked wings unfolded, and time will be offering forgetfulness and eternal bliss to every wounded person, hero or not.

[Donte]

I'm lying in bed in complete darkness with music playing on my iTunes. I've heard these tunes a million times, and I still get goosebumps. I don't know if the tears I'm crying are happy or sad but I'm grateful music exists.