When someone we cherish dies, the world can (or seem to) insist that we be polite about it. We are encouraged to fold our sorrow into a napkin, tuck it discreetly in a pocket, and get on with life. Yet the truth is, we cannot simply recover or refresh, like hitting refresh on a webpage that stubbornly will not load.
Our grief is not a computer glitch to be debugged, it is the natural invoice traded to us in exchange for the audacity of having loved.
And so, if we are going to survive this absurd bargain, we could cultivate some better ways of thinking about their dying, nine of them to be precise.
First, let us abandon the myth that grief should be tidy, swift, and inconspicuous.
If love was unruly and complicated, why on earth would grief show up wearing pressed trousers and combed hair?
We will never “get over it” as if grief were a bad flu. Instead, we will carry it like an oddly shaped antique vase, sometimes treasured, sometimes resented, but always undeniably ours. This untidiness is not failure; it is fidelity to the chaos of love itself.
Second, we should stop acting as though death has miraculously turned our beloved into saintly perfection.
They were, like us, flawed. They left socks on the floor, told terrible jokes, and maybe even forgot our birthday once or twice. Love does not demand we bleach out their imperfections in death. It rather insists we remember them fully, blemishes included. To honor them honestly is to acknowledge that affection is stitched together with irritations, resentments, and longings that never found closure.
We should laugh at those quirks, because if we do not, who will?
Third, we can forgive ourselves for all the things we wish we had done differently.
There is a dreadful temptation to imagine a final cinematic moment where we ought to have declared undying love or confessed some hidden truth. But reality is messier and far less cinematic. Most of what we needed to say leaked out in a hundred sideways comments, gestures, and half-finished conversations. They knew. We knew.
Love is not a test for which we failed to study.
Death was not a final exam.
A relationship is a long, rambling group project where everyone turned in their work late, and yet somehow the thing still got completed.
Fourth, let us reflect on the peculiar form of immortality available to the dead.
Their bodies may have retired from circulation, but they continue their lively existence in our minds. We will consult them in arguments yet to come, hear their sarcastic commentary during future weddings, or imagine their raised eyebrows when we do something ridiculous. In this sense, their life is delightfully parasitic, feeding on our future dilemmas and joys, ensuring they outlast their bodies by decades, perhaps even generations.
Fifth, we can release the peculiar and irrational fear that they are currently somewhere, sulking about our negligence.
Dying may be frightening, but being dead is not. The dead are free from anger, suffering, or resentment. They are not pacing the afterlife, muttering that we forgot to visit their grave last Tuesday. They are not miffed that we ate pizza while they decomposed. Death, however frightening, does not include holding grudges. They are, by all accounts, quite at peace, enjoying the profound serenity of having no to-do list. We should envy them a little, frankly.
Sixth, we might recognize that moving forward with our lives is not an act of betrayal.
It is, paradoxically, the deepest tribute we can pay. Love, when authentic, does not sulk that we are happy again. Love claps from the wings of the stage when we dare to keep living. To love again, to endure, to savor new joys, is to be loyal to what we once shared. It is not callousness to laugh again, it is obedience to their unspoken wish that we not become museum exhibits of permanent grief.
Loving something new does not say anything about whether we loved another in any way.
Seventh, we can reframe ambivalence not as weakness but as a testament to intimacy.
Our relationships were complicated because that is the entrance fee to closeness. The misunderstandings, disappointments, and minor hostilities were not detractions; they were proof that we had let each other close enough to irritate, frustrate, and confound. Ambivalence is simply the love story refusing to be flattened into a Hallmark card.
Feeling relief that someone’s suffering is over or strangely glad that the suffering they caused us has ended only shows one’s ability to be authentic and does not indicate the truth in their grief.
Eighth, let us recognize that memory is not static but alive.
Our conversations with them continue, reshaping themselves to answer new problems. We will imagine what advice they might have given, and sometimes we will even argue back. This mental haunting is not morbid; it is generous. It keeps them present, stubbornly refusing to yield to time, as if they were the most loyal of squatters in our consciousness.
Finally, ninth, we must concede that missing them is the surest evidence that they are still here.
Grief, paradoxically, is proof of connection. Every pang of sorrow is like a telegram arriving from the other side, reminding us that they are folded into our very fabric.
We ache, and in aching we honor, and in honoring we extend their life indefinitely within us.
So here we are, nine better ways to think about their dying. Not as clean closure, not as saintly perfection, not as abandoned guilt, but as messy, hilarious, complicated love, still very much alive.
They have left us, yes, but inconveniently, they also have not.
They remain, persistent squatters in our hearts and our minds, and we would not have it otherwise.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Dan Meyers on Unsplash
