Earlier this year, a long time friend from a city I used to live in posted on social media that their partner suddenly died. Both were quiet young - my friend was about 35, their partner wasn't even 30 yet - so I was understandably shocked. I messaged a mutual friend to ask what happened and he replied "It was just sad and stupid and so fucking tragic."
It turns out that the partner was killed in a car accident. A driver lost control of their vehicle and hit them and several others. And the sad, stupid, tragic part was that there was no one at fault: the driver had had a medical emergency of their own that tragically caused so much damage.
When someone is killed, there's usually a focal point towards which we can direct our anger. A drunk driver, for example, will see their day in court. If our loved one was murdered intentionally, there's a perpetrator responsible. Even if someone is killed in a plane crash, a terrorist attack, etc - there's someone or something to blame. And while blame won't ease the pain at all, there's that focus. There's somewhere for our pain to be channeled. There's the possibility of closure.
But what happens when there is no one at fault? What do we do when someone dies in a sad, stupid, and fucking tragic way? Blaming the driver in the death of my friend's partner is unfair and untrue because they now have to live with that burden themselves. If anything, we likely feel compassion for the driver for that reason - which then makes things even more complicated. Can we resolve such a loss without closure?
The point of this missive is that grief is complicated and messy, even with the most clear-cut losses. My husband died very suddenly from a massive heart attack - pretty straight-forward, right? It was natural for me to be very sad, and of course I was/am. But I also felt a million other emotions that are much more difficult to articulate. I was stunned he was gone so quickly, I was grateful we'd even been married at all, I felt cheated that we'd had so little time together, I was stumbling through all the legalities, I was straining to maintain our house and our rental, I was determined to keep up appearances at work, I was heartbroken for his daughter, etc etc etc - you get the idea. All of those were very true and present at the same time, just as trying to resolve the unresolvable now is for my friend. They have to sort through the messy array of emotions, and there's nowhere for that all to go. There's no one to blame, no one to punish. It just is. And that's the hardest part.
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