How to Not Deal With Death

With another month of too many celebrity deaths I’ve been doing that middle aged taking stock of my life. Since there isn’t very much inventory there to take stock of my thoughts have turned to the way I can completely wallow over the demise of a stranger whose work I admire (this is a new development for me, Bowie was the first celeb death that I reacted to with anything more than, “that’s unfortunate” and it hit uncharacteristically hard. I still have no idea what that is about), but expect myself to deal with losses that are close to me in a couple of days. My sister died in June after nearly two years of battling with cancer. I know that sounds like a cliché, but if you have ever watched a loved one terrified of dying and struggling every day just to sit up and pretend to eat, it feels like a fucking war.

We knew she was dying but hoped, became hopeless, hoped again and as with everything else, hid our despair behind our collective dark sense of humour. That’s how we roll, dodge and get out of the way of life in my family. Not to be one-sided, we are equally flippant about the good things. To this day, my immediate reaction to a compliment is to make a self-deprecating remark because I am much more comfortable with an insult and even with those, I often try to get a cutting remark about myself in before the other person can.

My sister, who was slipping in and out of lucidity in the last few days of her life, still got in some punchlines There was a moment when, speaking slowly to her, almost like you would a child, trying to reach her through the Ativan and morphine haze, my brother-in-law explained that oncologist was going to turn her case file over to a doctor closer to her, as at this point she was living with my niece in the city. Holding the sippy cup of sport drink she had just been given she asked, “and is that doctor the one who told you I would drink warm juice?” My big sis went down swinging.

I thought I had adequately mourned her and was moving forward. I cried the day my sister died and at her funeral, of course I did. For a few minutes, then I forced myself to stop and started trying to take care of the people around me because at that moment having no dark jokes to hide behind, I hid behind being useful.

Two days after her celebration of life I was back at work, trying to catch up on what had not been done in my absence, and the growing list of overdue assignments because, with a dying sister, I decided it would be a great idea to go back to University part time. Shut down the heart, we’re relying solely on the brain to get us through this.

A couple of weeks ago, ridiculously wallowing over the death of another celebrity stranger by revisiting his back catalogue I came across one that I had not heard before, “Life Becomes Noises”, Sean Hughes’ show about the death of his father from cancer. Lying in my bed in the dark listening (alone, obviously) I laughed and sighed in equal measures until that last fucking line, at which point I had a break down as the heart insisted on having its turn.

I’m not taking any courses this term and I got laid off from that job – which is fine, I hated it and the layoff was a tremendous relief - so now I have a lot of time to myself to think and feel and apparently pretend that the loss I am mourning is that of someone I’ve never met because I still feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach every time I must refer to my sister in the past tense.