Please note the post below contains some details involving suicide and addiction. This is not meant to cause any distress but rather to relay my personal account of the loss of a difficult person to addiction. Please do not continue if this will be upsetting to you.
In 2013, David Sedaris penned an essay about the loss of his sister Tiffany. "Now We Are Five" is a complex narrative that weaves Sedaris's typical nipping humor in with the confusion, regret, pain, and relief after the loss of a difficult person. Tiffany committed suicide without any explanation beyond that of her abrasive personality and lifelong combative relationship with her family. And since she was one of six kids, her siblings were left to sift through their own thoughts about what, if anything, they could have done so wrong to have her end her life.
I remember reading the essay when it was first published, which was about 4 years after losing my father. And while his death wasn't technically suicide, it may as well have been. His doctors warned him for years that he needed to stop drinking and he wouldn't - or couldn't. I don't know. But I do remember being in a hospital room with him when a doctor told him "If you start drinking again, you may as well put a gun to your head." And that's just what he did but without the gun, it was a much slower demise. I'd argue that was equally gruesome.
What Sedaris touched on that rattled my bones is the futility we feel after a loss like this. What can you say? People ask how the person passed. How do you answer? In Sedaris's case, "She killed herself"? In my case, "He drank himself to death"? So you say something bland instead to just make the question go away and you try to change the subject. There's nothing to say that will make sense of it.
Please note that calling our lost ones "difficult" isn't about judging addiction or mental illness at all, but it's rather a reflection of being caught up in the cyclone of their illness for years. It can feel impossible to tease the person and the illness apart, particularly when their actions have lasting ramifications for us.
As I've journeyed with my own grief, I've taken many different workshops and courses about loss and death. Grief expert David Kessler, author of "Finding Meaning," said in one of our classes "You might find out the medical why, but you'll never find a satisfactory universal why." After the loss of a difficult person, this is ever more so. We know the medical why behind their passing, but never the deeper whys: Why did they do this? Why did they live this way? Why didn't they get help? Those are the harder questions to ask, and the answers will never be found on the coroner's report.
When a difficult person passes under difficult circumstances, there is always societal shame and blame involved. What could we have done? What didn't we do? Even worse, what did we do, as if one conversation drove the deceased to their end. I was stuck in this psychological spin for years, torturing myself about what I did and didn't do that lead to my father's death. Thankfully, a very agile therapist stopped me and asked, "But Jamie - how else could it have ended?"
The death of a difficult person also brings the one emotion we can't ever admit: relief. Finally, finally, their misery is over. And finally, finally, ours is too. When people offered me their condolences, I remember thinking But, at least it's over... I knew I could never say that out loud, and I knew I'd sound heartless if I expressed relief that he was gone.
I've heard people say "Grief is grief," but I bristle at this. All grief isn't the same. The loss of a difficult person brings up so many complicated, interwoven emotions and we often can't talk about them. The cultural taboos prevail and we have to try to untangle the big ol' mess left in our minds. If we're lucky, we trust enough to seek help but often the difficult relationship caused massive trust issues as well.
And although I've preached forgiveness on here, I do know how hard-fought that can be. I maintained a hard heart for a long time as a means of self-protection but ultimately that just meant I felt guilt and anxiety about the past. Understanding that my father must have been in some deep emotional pain that he was unwilling or unable to face - and the two blur after a while - has helped me forgive him. And that, at least, is a step towards peace.
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