As writers we seem to be rather involved with death. So it seems to me good, perhaps important that we discuss how to write it. As we are many, I am sure we have experience to help our fellows. In fact I know so. Here we can describe our interreaction to that all pervasive ending.
Notes. This only applies to people.
This is not the place for consolation. Look for peace elsewhere.
Since I am unfortunately close to that dark presence, I can start.
When I heard the news, my stomach… well it’s hard to describe. It’s a lot like fear. Or the anticipation of something that one fears. I might describe it as my stomach turning into a black hole. Though that pain has not completely left, I felt much better towards the end of the night. It returned in full force the next day.
By then I was so so tired. It felt like instead of blood I had melted lead in my veins. Movement was effort. Perhaps at odds with this was an urge to move. I found something akin to release in nonstop pacing. I had to move. This was at times more necessary and at times less, rather like the pain, which I feel only very faintly now. It sometimes was a lot like nausea. Though tears threatened my eyes, the chance of throwing up felt greater.
Also my mind was filled with something I can only describe as a moan, which would at times softly escape my mouth. It was pure emotion. The feeling of terrible loss. Because I tend to sing, I found some comfort in long doleful notes.
Right now I keep finding myself stumbling upon a sensation of longing, semipresent, like the feeling of hunger when you miss a meal by an hour or two. This longing is vague, I am not sure what I am missing, but I am.
I watched the person who'd abused me my whole life waste away from a terminal illness. I wasn't the type to think, "oh you've sufferered so much (or are suffering) because of something unrelated, and so you shouldn't have to hear from anybody else that you've hurt them or that a person doesn't like you, but instead now you get to be forgiven without apologizing and liked for existing because woe poor thing." I never understood that way of thinking, or that socially manipulative prohibition. What I did understand was how humbling it is—how, just randomly, a human body will start to feel sluggish all the time and then start changing shape and basically rotting while the person is still alive. Then it gets to the brain and that person is still talking but it doesn't make sense, and then they can't communicate at all but still seem to need and want things. I have a genetic predisposition to that illness. That could be me in thirty years.
This individual wasn't abusive to everybody. Maybe the people who admired her or considered her a friend have a more typical reaction to this death like, "I'll miss that person being alive" or like the world is now worse without her in it. They have a right to that.
But I didn't begin to recover from my trauma until she stopped hurting me, and she only really stopped when she died. Whatever else she'd neglected in my upbringing, I might resent not having that provided when every functional human in society had that provided…but, it really was such a small price to pay (if it is indeed price rather than coincidence) for not having her on my planet anymore and not still having her be the sort of person that she was to me. So, death isn't the same event for everybody.
i think how grief affects you varies wildly, depending on a lot of factors. how close you were to the person, your personality and way of dealing with trauma, and even whether or not you think you deserve to grieve. i think there's a lot of different ways to write it.
personally, ive never really felt like i deserved to grieve any of the people around me who died. like i wasnt there enough for them, or i didnt know them well enough. instead, a lot of my emotions were kinda like grieving for those around me that knew them better. like my godmother, when her sister died, or my mother when her grandmother died. i didnt feel like i was allowed to grieve the same way they did, or that i even could, and so i instead grieved for those that were grieving. its been a weird thing for me, and i just feel like its a part of grief not a lot of people ever write about.
That’s why I loved that one story in the magazine though. Bc it touched on that part of death.