Heirarchy of mourning

[gordonzola]

It’s been an odd week. I guess weeks with death in them tend to be weird. I guess I’d like to keep it that way too, come to think of it. I spent my week working, drinking, baking kugels for two sets of mourning Jews and, ironically or non-ironically (I can’t tell anymore), watching a DVD of "Dead Like Me" episodes.

One thing about the aftermath of death that I find particularly tricky is the hierarchy of mourning. Unless its one’s lover, parent or child who dies, it seems there is always someone closer, someone hurting more. Because I am fairly sensitive to issues like that I tend to defer.

Certainly with Jonny’s death I was not a first tier mourner. I was part of the larger mutual aid network, but not someone who was a caretaker and intimate. I was sad and upset. I do feel the loss and miss my meanly funny Jewish holiday buddy. I would have bawled at the memorial if it hadn’t been run by his distant family and almost bereft of the Jonny I knew. I am a bawler.

For a man who found family in his friends it was odd that the family was so central in his memorial. That reflected their world-view not his. I don’t know if it’s traditional, but there was a receiving line upon the conclusion of the memorial. To leave the synagogue one went and greeted the family. It was so wrong. Distant relations who vaguely knew their "bohemian artist" relative were star mourners while people who did his laundry, cleaned his house, fed him, and sustained him for nearly two years were treated as guests.*

Last week people sent me sympathy for all the death and memorials I’ve had recently. While appreciated, I feel it’s somewhat misplaced. Besides the obvious fact that others have dealt with a lot more death in their lives (certainly folks in West Oakland who I do co-op stuff with. Re-scheduling a meeting due to a memorial is, while not common, also not surprising.) most of my deaths haven’t been in my smaller circle of intimates.

Leslie in 1989 was a part of our political collectives when she died in a car wreck in Arizona. I was hurt but not close enough to be devastated and immobilized like many of my friends. Plus I had a car, so I did the errands: picked up food and a memorial tree, shuttled people back and forth, and drove down some state highway with friends to find relief in a way that only Americans can, by driving way too fast.

Jamaal was jactitation’s death but I felt it in support and learned how fucked up family can be in times of grief.

I almost got into my only fight as an adult after Chris’s death. My co-workers and I were at Zeitgeist and semi-dressed up from a memorial. Some drunk started giving us shit for being yuppies and I stepped up and explained to him very clearly that we were at a bike messenger bar, mourning a bike messenger who got killed while riding his bike after another bike messenger’s funeral. Then I told him to shut the fuck up. I was ready to go too, in a way that I never have been before or since. He backed down and bought us a couple of pitchers to admit he was wrong. It was not a role I’ve ever played before, but I could in this case so I did. Some friends of Chris still bring it up in appreciation.

Ron I consciously kept distance with because, honestly, he always scared me a little no matter how much I liked him. His memorial was a reunion of Novato punk rockers. We stood amidst the iron workers and family members and remembered how much we love each other even if we are in different cities and don’t see each other much. It was then I realized that certain ties won’t break. Those days bonded us forever.

At Rachael’s death I was a first tier mourner to the only person I cared about there, comicbookgrrrl. But I was stealth. Rachael had stopped communicating with her parents, if they even cared, by the time we became close. CBG and I sat in the back of the yoga center and bawled for the friend we hadn’t seen in years. Then we went to the grave and bawled. Then we went to the bar and bawled. But my only responsibility, besides to Rachael’s memory, was to CBG. No one knew me enough to include me in the family memorial decisions which I am incredibly thankful for because I didn’t want to deal with them.

The problem with this perception of a hierarchy of mourning is that we all feel things differently. We mourn for different aspects of the same person, we mourn for different friends/family/lovers at the funeral of another, we mourn ourselves and what we’ve lost both specifically and of our own hopes and dreams. It can’t be cleanly placed. Death can bring out some really ugly things in the people left behind, but I think the concept of competitive mourning is really harmful. I might think it was just me who felt it, but I have talked to enough people over the years to realize that almost no one, beyond the aforementioned lover/parent/child category, knows where to fit in at times like these.

A sense of the feelings of others is important because it’s a basic building block of community. Accepting of a diversity of mourning is equally important because while some people may have material and emotional needs, mourning alone is one of the saddest things in the world. Obviously there can be real differences in the depth of despair and loss. Acknowledge that and move on with the task of taking care of each other and remembering the one no longer with us.



* I did appreciate that, in honor of Jonny’s sense of humor they made the rabbi get up and tell a "A rabbi walks into a bar…" joke. Oddly, the rabbi was just getting over a flu and sounded exactly like the therapist in "The Sopranos".