“What’s Up, Trouble?”
General opinion suggests you should not look to grief counselling until at least six months after the deceased’s death. You should let the dust settle. I lasted six days. The dust hadn’t settled.
You were barely in the ground before I started taking steps. I can still hear your voice. “What’s up, Trouble?” you would say. You were always the artist. Even the way you walked was that of a movie star. Always the performer and storyteller and when you told those anecdotes from your childhood; you would have a sound for every member of our family, voice-acting in the flesh.
No matter how hard things look, people say it’s better to read about grief and talk to your family than to rush into counselling. Not for me though. I rushed in. Counsellors seem to know a little about a lot. Ask Natasha about: “books with terminal illness or losing someone.” She says: “A Monster Calls, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Me Before You, Still Alice, 13 Reasons Why, The Perks of Being A Wallflower, My Sister’s Keeper.” All these stories are just interpretations though, aren’t they? People say everyone grieves differently. Perhaps it’s best to read Perks of Being a Wallflower, a story about a boy in an American high school, lonely and depressed after the death of his best friend.
Ask about: “dead aunts in popular culture.” Ask about: “grief over dead aunts.” Ask about: “grief over best friends.” Maybe it’s best to leave her alone with things like this. She can help in all numbers of ways but she didn’t know her like I did. Maybe I should look at photographs of you and your siblings. I know Grandma has them somewhere. Maybe look at photos from Uncle Dean’s 40th. Maybe look at photos from your wedding day and my brother’s Christening, a past bygone.
Should I ask the questions my younger cousins ask? Should I ask her my brother’s questions? “What happened to her? What was her illness? How did she die? Will I die?” I could write a poem made up of their questions and my observations and fictionalise the answers. Maybe I should read the poetry collections of Sylvia Plath. ‘Poppies in October’ or ‘Widow’ or ‘Insomniac’ — the words on the page consuming their victims like oil on fire. However, I might learn something new from imagery, and the connotations that poetry can bring after you lose the people closest to you.
I remember how you were the one to turn to when I finally had the courage to talk about my school days — the bullying, the abuse and psychological torment, trauma born in the common room. And all those memories were resurrected when I watched Goodbye Christopher Robin. In our many meeting together, you were Nanny and I was Billy Moon. Whilst my parents bickered, you were there. You knew that I needed someone to think I was important, that someone cared about me and you were that person. I won’t ever forget.
If I were to read this ten years from now, it will certainly trigger memories of spending many a weekend in Colindale, you dying mute, in your North London flat. We’d go to the Tate or we’d stay in and watch The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (back-to-back) or meet “your friend” at the New Chandos pub down the street after he had finished work. I’d have an Ocean Spray cranberry juice and you would have a Martini Rosso on ice, as was your habit.
I always imagined that one day you would drop dead in front of me but you didn’t. You always played a role. You were the fun aunt and it’s only now I am beginning to understand why you did that — a kid forced to grow up before his time. You were the performer pretending you weren’t sick, even in front of me, whilst you smiled and laughed. Quite like chess, you were playing a game within a game. You were the queen. You went here, there and everywhere. I was jealous: Denmark, Spain, and living out your epilogue in America.
Woody Allen once said something about life’s absurdness in one of
his films — “life is a comedy written by a sadistic comedy writer.” I took
that as him saying live everyday like it’s your last because it could be. And that’s life’s great joke, isn’t it? One minute you’re a pawn one square from
the end of the board, ready for your coronation, and in the next, that very
same pawn, (your last pawn) has been outmanoeuvred. And then, you’re moves away from being checkmated and you don’t even see it coming.
It’s a famous fact that you were vain. You told me so yourself; one day I called you “Auntie” and you replied “Don’t call me that. It makes me sound old”. And when you got sick you felt even older. I felt older as well — at twelve years old looking at mortality between the eyes. When I was a boy, watching you, I aged ten years. I have been twenty-three for the last decade. Ask: “what happens to a person’s body between being diagnosed with Scleroderma and death?”
Or ask about: “feel-good films with terminal illnesses.” I could watch Me Before You with Mom; or Breathe with Grandma; and Forrest Gump with Dean and Auntie Mary — I’m allowed to call her auntie. She likes it. Forrest Gump is somewhat uplifting — spoiler alert — until the end when Jenny dies. As if YA fiction and coming-of-age films will somehow change my reality. It allows me to hide, to run like Forrest. “Run Forrest run” Jenny says. But then her heart gave out — much alike how yours did in Dallas. You could no longer see. You could no longer hear or speak. You just were. You were no longer in pain though. No more pills, no more mid-street panic attacks or shivering hands from sudden changes in climate or temperature.
I was home with Grandma when he called her. In your solemn silence, our family died that day. Covered in blood. Ten years and done. “We can’t keep her on life support” he says. “The machine is breathing for her. Understand?” he sobbed down the phone. “I’m sorry, she’s gone”. There were some murmurs. Then the screams came, paralytic and piercing like a nail to glass.
Tennyson wrote a poem called ‘In Memoriam A.H.H’ in which he talks
about the loss of a friend and how people who grieve often struggle to
find meaning. If anyone has had similar experiences, I get it.
I’m sorry for jumping around like this between these different events but they are important in showing the collapse of minds consumed in grief, as my family are extensions of my own consciousness. Ask: “how long is the proper time to grieve?” Ask: “do human beings have souls?” Ask Natasha: “is there life after death or do we float through a void for eternity?”
Do we do away with your possessions? You know, like your clothes and hairbrushes and handbags — and your iPhone4 philosophical teachings or Jane Austen novels and nods to Malcolm X. When is the right time? When Granddad wails asleep or is it when Grandma sobs over the kitchen sink?
I think back to my days in London as a child. And I’d often watch you sleep, as children often do to their parents. But you weren’t my parent; at the same time, you played both mother and father to me. You’d lay snuggled under the duvets and all I could see was your long hair. “Wake up Luisa” I’d say and you would smile and laugh. However, in one of my dreams recalling these weekends, when I said “wake up, Auntie”, I wanted you to smile and laugh (like you normally did) but you didn’t.
