How do people celebrate death around the world?
One thing we all have in common is life and death. There are lots of different traditions to mark the occasion of a person dying.
I have always found comfort in the power of literature. A hidden ability that I possessed, to escape into another world, simply by reading a few lines whenever I was upset. As I grew older, I found other ways to cope with my stress, anxiety and upset, such as talking to friends or playing video games, and reading took a backseat. However, when my dad died, just after I turned 17, books became a huge part of my life again.
Growing up, my house had been full of books. As a young child, I can remember my dad having a locked cabinet full of inappropriate books that I was not allowed to read. When I was older, we would, in detail, discuss the books we were both reading. I would read his recommendations, and he would read mine. He was always very supportive of my choice to study English Literature at university, despite his slight disappointment that I wasn’t planning to read Chemistry like he did.
We did not have a huge amount in common as a whole, and he was a quiet person. Therefore, reading makes me feel connected to my dad, as this is one of the few interests that we shared.
At the time of my dad’s death, I did not have any friends who had experienced the death of an immediate family member, and therefore nobody to relate to or to swap stories with. Reading books that contained content about dying and grief became a way for me to understand my own feelings towards my dad’s death and the surrounding circumstances. I could relate to some of the feelings that the characters in these books, or the authors, were expressing, despite our individual experiences being different in other ways. I’d like to share a few of my favourite books about grief that I read after my dad died.
Trigger warnings for the following books: descriptions of suicide, descriptions of death
‘Grief is the Thing with Feathers’ by Max Porter
This book shows the turbulence and the numbing effect that can come with grief, which is explored through the metaphor of the omnipresent crow, who holds everything together, as a mother figure, teacher, spiritual leader, but also as a hindrance and a nuisance. It is prose poetry, but written in an inconsistent manner, with perspective changes from Dad, Crow, and the Boys, demonstrating the different ways that people can grieve and the complex nature of grief in general. It is not an easy book to explain, because grief is not easy to explain. This is exactly why I love it. I really like the idea behind the quote ‘Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project’ from this book. This feels true to my experience; although it has been 2.5 years since my dad died, and although my life has now grown around the void that he left, I would not say that I have ‘moved on’.
‘A Trick I Learned from Dead Men’ by Kitty Aldridge
When reading between the lines, despite the light-hearted and quirky internal monologue from main character Lee, there are a lot of layers to his grief and to the claustrophobic atmosphere that somewhat shadows his life. His mother had died several years before the story is set, but grief still has a huge impact on Lee’s life, such as how he relates to others, including his relationships with his brother and stepdad. There is no real resolution to the story, and, in fact, worse things happen as it goes on, with there being little character development. But I like that it demonstrates that life and time continue, even when traumatic events, like death, happen.
‘I Had a Brother Once: A Poem, A Memoir’ by Adam Mansbach
Mansbach takes us through many aspects of his own grieving process- the moments before he found out about his brother’s suicide, how he felt immediately after finding out, and the years following, that his brother was not able to experience. The individual details make it what it is- details about items, family members, the past, present, future, and their Jewish culture. It helped me with my grief because it feels like nothing is left out, that all of Mansbach’s feelings towards the death of his brother are explored, with the writing being evocative and raw. ‘The things he gave me are totemic & devoid at once. a hand drum from Ahmedabad, a Costa Rican hammock, a Cuban baseball jersey, some low red candle holders from the crate… I gather a few into a pile & think this, this is all I have left or tell myself I had a brother once.’
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