Last April one of my friends from elementary school died. He was my age, or at least I was close to his age – he died two days before my birthday. I found out because my brother showed me an Instagram post. We weren’t close, having lost contact after elementary school, but when you’ve known someone since you were five, when you realize he was the first of your cohort to die, it becomes a little different.
I didn’t cry. How could I have? I barely knew him. My father told me that I hadn’t processed the grief yet, but I disagree. When you have such tenuous connections to actual loss, the grief that comes and goes in waves isn’t as potent.
My grandmother on my father’s side died when I was very little. I have close to no recollection of her. My father keeps her picture on a high shelf along with the ashes of all of our cats to keep watch over us. It isn’t as comforting to me as it is to him. How am I ever to measure up to my father’s memory of his beloved mother? Would she be proud of me, the queer, transgender, disabled, leftist me? The sulky, rebellious me that my father hates? Would she share my father’s hate?
One of my online friends died in February of 2023. It was, as most deaths in my life seem to be, very sudden. I still don’t know how he died. But his offline friend, our mutual friend, keeps a line dedicated in their online bio for him. They go dark for weeks at a time, only surfacing to give a small update of their activities before going away. They used to be one of the most active members of my online group. I never knew the real name of that friend who died, but just like an old scar, every reminder hurts like the first time, the grief welling up before ebbing away, before it can crest. He is the source of my most tangible grief, and I never even knew what he looked like. I can only ever talk about him now in the present tense when I talk about his haunting upon my life. And I can’t talk about him with anyone else, because they disdain the concept of online friends. My father once told me about my online friends that they were all groomers trying to get me to expose myself.
I didn’t even know him, and he didn’t ever try to get me to expose myself, so is it alright to feel sad that one day he was there and then one day I got a message telling me he was gone and never coming back? Is it alright to feel this secondhand grief?
How am I supposed to confront my grief for these people when the grief itself keeps slipping through my fingers? What is the right way to cry for someone, how long are you allowed to mourn? My tears are cheap and easily gotten if you say the right words to me, but I can’t cry about this, so am I faking? Did I ever even care, is it wrong to feel the hurt when I’m reminded of them?
I went to a robotics conference and a kid died there and I never knew their name and I didn’t know their face and I was never told who it might have been but my robotics mentor told me it was quite alright to feel sad and seek professional help. That there would be counselors on the floor the next day for anyone who needed help. For someone we were never told about. Why is that considered worse than someone you knew through words on a screen dying? All this grief, experienced through other people. Is it alright for me to feel sad now, or do I need to go into hysterics for you to believe me?
may 06 2024
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