Saying What You Really Mean

Think Tank #167

Ogura Yonesuke Itoh, Kilauea Caldera by Night

My grandfather died yesterday. There are a few things that I wanted to write about today in reaction to this. The first is the fact that I’m not as sad as I “should” be. I was devastated at first. I grieved two months ago when he went into the hospital. I grieved when he came home to die, knowing that he’d never get out of bed again.

After a few weeks of more of the same, the grief would come in slow, brief spurts. A pang here or there when he would say that he was suffering, another when I learned that even talking became a struggle. I watched the proudest man I knew lose everything—even the ability to open his eyes—and after a while, I could hardly conjure up an emotion at all.

When I heard that he’d died yesterday when I got out of work, I was relieved. It solved a few problems. His bank account was dwindling fast; the money would’ve run out eventually, and what then? Plus, of course, he was suffering. How many months of torture does a person have to endure before it finally ends?

Which was the thought I had first? I’m not sure. Grief is selfish at its core. I’m not grieving the loss of my grandfather’s life; I’m grieving the loss of my grandfather in my life. That’s why it hit me harder when his life worsened than when it ended. Once we stopped hanging out when I got home from work, chatting about the phone calls he’d gotten that day and the mildly interesting thing that happened to me at work, for all intents and purposes, he was gone. What did it matter if his body was still in the other room?

It was the same with my grandmother. Her real “death” occurred so long after her health and her mind deteriorated that it was hard to even feel sad. Instead of reckoning with grief, the loss of the person we loved is followed by shock and stress and—

In some sick way that no one really wants to admit is true, humans overextend their welcome nowadays. In a “natural” world, he wouldn’t have been revived from that first horrible day. Of course, his life would have probably ended long before it did. It’s a Faustian bargain. For better or for worse, the modern world has made its choice.

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Now that it’s over, I’ve been distracting myself. Cracking jokes. Oscillating between pretending it’s not happening and busying myself with distractions and beating myself up for all the days that I decided to stay home and spare myself the pain of seeing him laying there.

Those are the stages of grief, right? Clearly, I’m stuck in the first two.

Still, there’s a slimy feeling involved in only being able to cry when no one is watching. In watching the sadness of the people around me—even my own mom—and watching myself respond like a stranger, even when I know that it’s not what she needs from me.

Even worse, I’m battling with myself about whether or not to use the stupid euphemisms. Did he “die” or did he “pass away”? Reading too much George Orwell has made the latter an overly-pretentious pet peeve of mine, but what else do you say when you have to explain your absence at work? Sanitizing it is necessary.

It’s funny how life lines up. Yesterday, I described what a euphemism was to my seventh graders using that exact example. My explanation was, “Using language that isn’t as strong makes it easier for people to talk about hard things.”

Does it actually make it easier to say? Does it actually make it easier to hear? It seems more like a formality, a signal of conformity, a verbal acknowledgement that yes, I know that what I’m saying is horrible, and no, I’m not comfortable with having to deliver the news.

I don’t really know how to finish this, so I guess I’ll end it just like my grandfather’s life—drag it out long after the last bit of substance has been squeezed out, and then cut it off abruptly, when it’s been just long enough that no one expects it.

I won’t be doing much writing for the rest of the week. I’ll be back on Monday.

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